


Roads to Valhalla or Somewhere Like It

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Ace Lives, Angst, Coma Lives, Coma's Broken Axe, Dag knows what she wants, Don't bother forgiving me, F/M, Female Domination, First Time, Fluff, Gore, Harsh Realities of the Apocalypse, Masturbation, Mildly Dubious Consent, Nux Lives, Oral Sex, Slit Lives, Smut, Terrible poetry, Unforgivable Grossness, Violence, War Boys, War Boys Showing Affection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-04-17 21:54:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 58,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4682774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.</p><p>I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brave New World

**Author's Note:**

> I fell for Nux first since he's like a feral puppy with Capable and then came my love of Slit, since he's such a righteous prick (and that scene where he's begging to go on Gigahorse made me want to hug him, coo to him like a pitiful, obnoxious child) and soon followed my worship of Coma The Doof Warrior, he needs no reasons to love really.
> 
> This is what my mind needs after the credits roll. Please, enjoy and let me know what you think down in the comments, if you find the time of course. This will be my first real go at writing in awhile and I've got it planned out to be a rather large endeavor. I have no Beta but myself (which is sometimes terrible) so please forgive any mistakes. I do apologize in advance.
> 
> I also listened to nothing but Iron Maiden while writing this chapter...
> 
> Enjoy!

 

 

 

Under the wheels...he’d thrown himself under them, he had thought - remembered.

 

Rictus held the sun in his hands, he’d thought, but it had been the V8 engine and he was in the way - the only thinking keeping him from her. It had been an easy choice, and Nux saw her before he’d gone out historic. He’d throw himself out, under the wheel. Hadn’t he? No...

 

He hadn’t. 

 

He could feel the wheel in his hands, knuckles stiff around the metal, as if he’d never let go even when he felt his head slice down in sand and shrapnel, his eyes packing with grit and the flames flowing down his throat and nostrils with his last heavy breath of life. When he exhaled he told himself he’d been awaiten, and if he wasn’t then maybe she would watch for him in the stars, just like she’d said she would. But everything he’d been told about his life after death guaranteed no pain, only feasting...only battles - a place where his addiction to water wasn’t a constant concern, nor the night fevers. Just shine. A place of pure shine.

 

Instead of anything like Nux had expected he opened his eyes to find that, behind the granules of goopy sand and a cloud of bloody tears, he was still in the War Rig with a very curious lizard eyeballing him quietly. Nux screwed his lips together.

 

Little streams of yellow light were filtering down inside the dark, dry cab. The lizard’s head snapped at him and a bulbous, pink tongue slid out along one red eye. A second head tilted back - two side-eyes on him in the dark. Nux’s stomach growled under a heavy layer of sand, burying him to the chest. His hands barely breached the earth, stuck tight in their death grip on the wheel. The lizard sprinted over his knuckles, licked again and paddled off through a nook in the dash, kicking a light dust of sand in his face.

 

“What a terrible day…” his own voice sounded dead - deader than when he’d been half a corpse, days before the Fury Road. When he tried to lick his lips and swallow, he tasted lumps of hard sand and blood, the sweet slime of snot, but somewhere he tasted her and it made his guts go hot - over-heated. 

 

“Capable.” _I’ll follow you._

 

The light coming in was the hard yellow of disease, of water-sickness and Nux knew he had hours before the sun would go down. But if he really was alive, then would he really live long enough to see the moon at all? He didn’t have long to pry his way out and get that lizard - get back to her. 

 

_Eat the lizard. Kiss Capable._

 

Just thinking about her made his lips vibrate, despite the pain and the numb - the pressure pushing in all around him and something wet and sticky under his ribs that could have been an open wound but he couldn’t be so sure when everything felt like one.

 

He tried to wiggle his toes in his boots, the distance between leather and busted toes was short but at least he didn’t have a bunch of dense grit weighing his feet down.

 

For a moment he laughed; sharp, broken and kami-krazy. But when he went to twist his hips, fishing himself from the sand like he’d had to do before, when Slit tilted them off balance that one time and Nux had crashed through the windshield to go waist deep down in the earth - well, he felt a bit cheated. This was right-side up though and the sand was packed tight, like rock. Nux didn’t know how to wiggle his way out, only knew that Valhalla, or the stars - something - had dispelled him from their gates and he refused to die soft, stuck in the sand. Not inside the War Rig, with a fat lizard watching him from the gritty darkness. 

 

Capable was still out there, just outside this cab, and he knew that he wanted to kiss her one more time. Just once before going soft. He could accept a soft death if he could give her warm cheek a mouth-touch right before.

 

_THAT! would be real shine._

 

So, he pushed all the air out his lungs, pried his fingers back off the wheel and shucked his arms up out of the grave. A pull of dried blood made his skin, from Larry and Barry all down the left side of his body stretch. It hurt like little else did, but when he cried nothing came out. His throat was bloody scorched dry and only his nose stung instead of the tears he knew would have come with so much pain. Bone-dry too.

 

The pain was suffocating. Worse than when Slit had done his scarring. This pain spidered into his neck, pushing barbed coils inside his ear, slithering in his brain and taking his throat into razor-laced hands. Nux might have choked on the pain of that but the scaly cyclope snapped on his black thumb, dragging him away from the feeling until it subsided. Even with sick in his throat Nux paused, counted his luck and crushed the lizard is his hand. 

 

It oozed a sour slime, but his stomach howled so Nux bit off it’s heads, crunching them with an animalistic fury before swallowing the bitter mash. 

 

Blood dribbled down his chin, coated his throat and in his fist the tail whipped around frantically, before too long, he ate that too. The belly was juicy and acrid, but it coated his empty stomach like a fresh coat of warpaint. Minutes later, he managed a few steady breaths, feeling that relief he could only relate to having eaten something. The blood was just as good as water, he knew, licking his lips of the irony drip, swiping at the rest with his fingers and licking them clean. 

 

“Glory...be…” It was no blood bag, but it’d have to do.

 

Nux licked his teeth clean, feeling not long later his body humming like an engine with nitro fuel, or more like a rusted V8 with a droplet of guzzoline. Either way, when he gave his hips a rough twist, sucked in what he could and breathed out - he budged up. 

 

Somewhere, distant he could hear the Doof’s axe, picked and plucked. It was fiant. The thing in his chest was louder and faster which didn’t seem right, but he heard it all the same and it sang in his muscles, giving him a mindless devotion to getting-unstuck. With the Doof he could let his muscles tear as he pulled himself out, head banging on the roof of the cab. His pants were lost in the sand, and only one boot came out with him, but after going at it, inch by inch for what he knew to be days but was probably minutes, he was out - laying cramped and exhausted over the cool sand. He was thankful of it now, so harmless and cold on his feverish, overworked skin.

 

Fresh blood flowed from his shoulder, making the sand sticky and all the tiny rough granules cling to him harder than they did even to his putrid sweat. 

 

His inner engine banged like it wanted out. Hard enough that he worried it’d fly out of him, smack around wetly in the War Rig until he went out soft...or maybe that was pretty historic if he thought hard on it. But he wasn’t ready to go yet. Still had to give Capable another kiss, then his engine could blow if it wanted to.

 

“Soo...shiny…” he breathed, hoping his chest would stop hammering soon, “So chrome!” He heard the Doof again and rolled over, ignoring the throbbing inside his body as he punched at the ray of light - the hole. His knuckle shredded. It didn’t budge so he layed flat on his back and bent his legs, kicking with bare and booted feet at the hole, over and over again until he was slowly blinded by the yellow stains.

 

The darkness gradually evaporated. And the sun shined down hard, bringing in gushes of heat that tried to cook him alive. The Doof ceased, but he kept kicking. Distant sounds came upon him, shaking his grave, but on and on he kicked. Metal shifted and something in his foot snapped, sending another violent bullet of pain all the way to his knee. Nux ignored it and kicked again. 

 

Then, amidst the pain, the heat and his insides pounding and crying, someone pulled down a large rock, exposing the world. Nux could hear it falling, crushing glass and denting metal, plunking down in the sand. A window of yellow and orange was open to him. A new world - one of air that moved and sunlight. 

 

A dark shadow peered inside, braced over the frame of the War Rigs passenger-side. The head moved to the side, peering down at him, but Nux couldn’t see it - saw the ropes swaying from it’s head but that didn’t mean anything to him in this moment. 

 

“We’re alive?” was all he thought to ask, his voice still a ruin of smoke and flame but the pain was nothing compared to whatever had broken in his foot, or the open wound on his shoulder and the pain in his ribs and inside the fibers of his arms…

 

The figured nodded, turned to the side and from the right another head peered out, chrome-topped like his, fingers gripping the edge.

 

“We have another?” his voice was almost soft if not for the sharp, undertones of steel and fractured bone - as if his throat was covered in spines and each word was serrated a thousands times over before anyone got to hear it, and Nux knew then who it was, “Bring him forth, so that he might taste freedom. Another lamb from the flock.” 

 

The Doof Warrior was grinning when Nux was hauled, half-boned from the War Rig. A stray piece of scrap sliced his naked thigh, but it meant nothing when the sun fully hit him, naked and broken, but alive. Down the pile of rock, sand, metal and burning rubber he saw a small group of white bodies, some streaked with red, unmoving - others were alive and staring up at him.

 

One of them Nux knew well - one of them was holding the fleshy, burnt stub of an arm, glaring from black and red swollen eyes that narrowed out from a half-burnt face, attached to a cooked body. 

 

Slit…

 

...was not as happy to see him as Nux was, but he knew, even though he could barely think on a straight line, that Slit had a right to be upset with him. Nux hadn’t witnessed him, back when the Razor Cola had blown. But Slit was alive and even though he could see his Lancer shaking more from anger than the pain, he grinned wide. Relieved.

 

Unfortunately, he might have died before he could give a cry of ‘Valhalla!’. Either way, he’d given it his best shot and he could only try as hard as he could to stave off the soft death. Mediocre, but Nux probably wasn’t a War Boy any longer, so he felt little else but the blanket of black and a strange bliss when the pain ended.

 

Maybe he’d go to the stars. Since, after all, she had told him Valhalla was a lie.

 

Coma took a hold of the War Boy before he slid down the scads of scrap. Sometimes he could feel where they were without knowing; seeing. His War Drummer shifted loudly, another scuff of flesh on flesh and the load he bore was halved. 

 

“Down we go,” he rasped, snapping his fingers, careful of the broken ones, as he found the flat levels on his slow way down. The War Boy was like dead weight, but he felt less dead than the true dead and under his hand he was still warm - blood still flowing and heart still pulsed in weak beats. 

 

“Boss, the’ trash pile iz-”

 

“This one is alive, Dizzer. The gates haven’t opened for him yet,” they wouldn’t even if he die now. None of them would. Coma knew though, somewhere he knew none of them would get thru the gates, even if they’d gone out historic. Some how he was sure it was nothing like the Immortan had described, knew it then when first heard as a boy and knew it now. But the ones left alive wouldn’t have tried so hard to live if the fear of being left on the wrong side of gates wasn’t an option to them. They refused to die...even with missing limbs and broken bodies...even with holes in their bellies - hands all that kept their guts from spilling out.

 

“Bat’elz ova’. He wn’t make it there ene’wayz.” 

 

Coma could smell the stink of bile, of piss, shit and decay. The sun had baked the reek into a thick aroma of pure sludge. Even the strong smell of guzzoline could not dampen the ambrosia. Coma swore he could taste the rot.

 

“Give ‘im here! I’ll shredd ‘im myself! Traitor!” a harsh sob broke the belched violence, “S-s-scum!” 

 

The one-armed, burnt War Boy was shivering, Coma knew from the way he screamed. A voice clogged with blood and burnt flesh. Hurt - it was evident inside the vulnerable screams. They’d not make it through the side if they wasted energy shredding each other. And this War Boy forgot how hard he might find it, to shredd someone with one hand.

 

“There is no point shredding when there’s nothing left but ribbons.” His fingers, even the broken two, plucked at the air by his side, itching for his Axe that was halved, laying with broken strings in the sand. Pain came with the urgent twitch of his fingers, yes, but it helped him escape the ache in his sockets whenever he should have cried but couldn’t. _She_ was gone too, lost in the rubble and the chaos. Maybe _She_ had burned when the tanks had blown on the first night. When it was all a blaze of smoke and heavy heat - crackling fire.

 

They - the other War Boys - had told him the treasures had escaped. 

 

The Dag had been among them - the one that he could smell from his Wagon. He’d thought on The Dag that first night after the War.

 

She smelt like _Her_. 

 

Once before, long ago he’d inhaled her. The day they’d captured her. She’d been small then. His War Band told him about her, describing in ways he couldn’t imagine - had no reference for but he enjoyed hearing it all the same. It had been a smell his only referenced for had been _Her_. The rest of that day, stowed away after War, he’d been calm and blissed out with his Axe laid over his groin, plucking at unwired strings in the dripping quite of his prison, pretending _She_ was still beside him - an old memory suddenly so vivid again.

 

A memory of happiness - of completion and serene normality. Of childhood.

 

The briefest smell of The Dag had drifted up his nose when _She_ had been knocked off his head, barring his senses to everything. Guzzoline, blood, dust and _Her_. He had screeched her name ‘Daaaag’ as his fingers tore on his Axe, suddenly slipping extra fast and easy, lubricated by his blood.

 

The vibrations painted the knowing. It had flowed fluid and uncommanded. He knew the hills and vehicles, the War Rig, the racing of earth in either direction. He shredded a solo for The Dag even if she didn’t think to look at him. It had been giddy and freeing, so loud, so bright and it had been all him, just for her. And he’d known the world for the first time.

 

“Nux is mine! My driver, mine to shredd!”

 

“No shredding…” Coma said low, passing by the burnt smell of the War Boy, snapping his fingers until the faintest knowing of a vehicle lay before him. They draped the War Boy, Nux over the hood and Coma let himself slide down in the dirt, plucking the air fast, too eager for his halved Axe. When het got it back in his hands he felt the true pain of his broken digits but relished the comfort of the motion all the same. He fell back into the sand, kicking his leg up over a bent knee and tasted the dust he disturbed, plucking his strings, mimicking the sound of the steady drip of water in the caves. Feeding the falling sun with song.

 

There was no more movement from the one-armed War Boy, just heavy breathes and then shortly, nothing at all but a faint _‘smeg’_ spat into the sand.

 

Coma let the rest of his War Band shift in the sand, yanking away sharp-sounding scrap and wet-slapping gore, pulling out bodies mutilated judging by the weight they made in the sand and sometimes just small pieces that barely made a sound at all.

 

Every once in awhile Coma would waken, sometimes when the world was hot and then later when it was cold. Everytime he’d hear screams - screams of _‘witness’_ and _‘valhalla’_. Once a heavy chorus of laughter, which despite all his loss, made him grin a bloody grin that tore his thirsty lips.

 

None of them were yet to be completely broken.

 

When he next woke back to black the world was still cool, but there were screams and sounds of smacking flesh, of grunts and the unmistakable bubble of water being forced out a narrow hose. The War Rig was carrying Aqua Cola and by the sounds they’d uncovered it. But the groan of rock joined the groan of the half-dead and soon an eruption of falling rock and rending metal. It was far away, but the noise still made him jerk up from his flaccid splay on the earth.

 

“What’s happening?” he barked; garbled in blood and spit gone thick in his mouth during sleep.

 

“Someone’s opening the pass from the other side. One of the Doof Drummers got crushed under the Wagon...it looks like it fell over when they blasted the top,” it was the War Rig Boy, Nux...sounding like he was still laying on the hood, sounding better but still damaged.

 

“Who?” Coma asked, plucking his Axe to know something close, something not ahead - something that wasn’t one of his crushed War Drummers. _Witness_ was on his lips, but it was pointless in so many ways that the thought once again made his sockets ache.

 

“I can’t see ‘im from here, Doof War-”

 

“On the other side of the Canyon. Do you know-do you see?”

 

Silence, then a shift of metal - a weight lifted from flat tires, “No, but-”

 

_Kami-krazy War Boys!_

 

_Who are we!? War Boys!....Kami-krazy War Boys!!_

 

On the opposite side of the wall of mangled corpses, wagons, pursuit vehicles, woofers, rock and death came the chant - the call. The salvage run chipped away, bit by bit. Rocks raced down to cries on this side of the living, chanting loud along with the others. Wet splashes where the bits finally clamored to the bottom - each scrap flooding air through the canyon. Coma could hear it like song, blending with the War Boy’s vocals. In his lap his fingers, whole and broken plucked and skidded along the Axe, mimicking the rhythm of the sudden clamour and vigor. He could feel the ballad hitting a crescendo. He listened as the climax ignited and then...there was a collective silence a second before the canyon reverberated with the applause of a hundred, victorious War Boys.

 

_War Boys!!_

 

Even, in that wed chaos, Coma swore he heard the dead cheering.

 

 


	2. Curdled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to twiggzzler, Liisiko and Zoadgo for the wonderful comments. They are a pleasure to read and absorb. <3
> 
> I fell for Nux first since he's like a feral puppy with Capable and then came my love of Slit, since he's such a righteous prick (and that scene where he's begging to go on Gigahorse made me want to hug him, coo to him like a pitiful, obnoxious child) and soon followed my worship of Coma The Doof Warrior, he needs no reasons to love really.
> 
> This is what my mind needs after the credits roll. Please, enjoy and let me know what you think down in the comments, if you find the time of course. This will be my first real go at writing in awhile and I've got it planned out to be a rather large endeavor. I have no Beta but myself (which is sometimes terrible) so please forgive any mistakes. I do apologize in advance.
> 
> I also listened to nothing but Mastadon while writing this chapter...
> 
> Enjoy!

Somewhere in the chaos Slit saw Nux being hauled up over a sea of barely initiated War Boys, some looking worse than his Driver did - those too sick and worthless to ride out on the Fury Road. He figured they’d shredd him good, take his limbs and decorate their rims with his meat and bones until the crows made him white, but they were all a sea of wide, red grins chanting _Liberator…_

 

_Liberator! Liberator of Mothers! Glory be to Nux the Liberator! Liberator!!_

 

Slit felt his pain fester like a poorly kept lance, rusting and snapping...gunpowder leaking out like the blood that still refused to dry like a sealant on his stub. His throwing arm, torn at the elbow. The air on his bare bone had been the worst at first, now he didn’t feel it, now it was just the ants biting at absent fingers and the fire peeling back his flesh just below where he had none anymore. Slit tightened his last hand above the rendered flesh and bone, held on tight as he watched Nux, his driver - the smeg, the traitor - being lifted up into a Lancer’s perch. One of the War Pups, barely a War Boy smacked on the hood and off the vehicle went, sweeping sand and belching flames. Disappearing into the distance. 

 

Nux had left him behind…again.

 

Across the valley of rock and rubble, his eyes still on the dust trail Nux had left, he watched the Gigahorse roll over the lows and highs of the opening. He sat in the sand, with a War Boy he knew from his Pup Pile, both his legs crushed, but still wheezing out breaths. He hated Nux. Hated him deep in his gut - Slit hated him more than the absence of his lacer’s arm, of the pain throbbing around his chest and neck where his skin was burnt and raised up in weeping welts.

 

Wretch, the broken War Boy at his side had asked Slit to kill him, said he didn’t care about going out soft. Just wanted the pain to end.

 

Slit ignored him - he had lost everything and more. Lost his driver to the Breeders, his arm to the War Rig and a good bit of his canvas to the explosion and then more to the burn of guzzoline as he’d laid trapped in the mess. If anyone should have been begging for a soft death it should have been him. But he didn’t.

 

Slit wasn’t yet so mediocre as that.

 

When he’d woken up alone in the pile of twisted, car bones - the Razor Cola beyond repair - it was his life or his arm. Maybe he should have waited in the heat, in the piss he leaked and the smoldering flames. But Slit had missed going out historic so he screamed out his pain, jerk, dislocating his trapped arm and putting all his strength into tearing himself from the crackling wreckage, leaving his skin torn and hanging. Shredded himself.

 

That pain had been the worst of his half-life. 

 

Even when he was but a War Pup and that smeg-shit Initiate of his decided to flay his mouth open from ear to ear, slow and methodical with his flesh lance jammed deep inside him - that had been less brutal than tearing himself apart. 

 

The pain he could manage, it was the humiliation of doing it. He left his lance arm in the Razor Cola and it was only by his hatred of Nux and his desire for Valhalla, a place where pain meant nothing and he could eat and drink and fight for all eternal, that gave him the strength to walk onward. 

 

Slit had followed the black plume on the horizon, each step fueled and drained him all at once. 

 

So when Wretch had been pulled out of one of the vehicles, his legs busted, broken but there, Slit had no patience for him when he tried to scratch at him, begging for death.

 

“Kill _yourself_ , smeg,” he cursed, hissing at him when his scratching persisted and rolled up on his feet, hobbling only a second on weak knees - only briefly thinking about giving into the piles of heavy pain - before leaving Wretch to his misery alone.

 

The Gigahorse came to a stop a few meters over dry, even sand. The dash was covered in soot and caked blood, but Slit recognized that face behind that yellow, putrid film - had hoped to blow it with his lance more than once. 

 

Imperator Furiosa. His name made his head spin and his knees buckle, nearly taking him under. He was not mediocre. 

 

Slit licked his lips, tonguing the breached sides of his broken smile and took a quick step forward.

 

_You’re too broken to shredd anyone anymore._

 

He froze, staring at her as she stepped out, leaning just off the side of the Gigahorse, staring out with eyes of wet-pain under a brow of black grease. The Imperator barely acknowledge him when she looked his way, and that stung as much as his arm that wasn’t an arm anymore. A thin, brown limb snaked out the door, grabbing tight to the loose fabric at the Imperator’s hips. Through the dash he could make out a small form, short hair. Not a War Pup. 

 

Pole Cats, ripples of white - flowing like something fallen from Valhalla. Shiny and chrome, but brown and small.

 

One of the Breeders.

 

She’d brought a Breeder with her - one of the treasures. _Not a hand laid on them,_ and this Traitor Imperator had brought one of them on a salvage run, through a canyon that could have cracked, fallen and broken them all. She spat in the face of the Immortan Joe!

 

But...if she was here. Slit hissed in a breath, curled his fingers so tight around his stub he felt his body howling under his hand. It wasn’t good...

 

No one told him what had happened, but he hadn’t bothered to ask, assuming they were all waiting for the salvage run lead by their Immortan. It never occurred to him the possibility he wasn’t coming for them - that they were all waiting to die, or waiting for her to rescue them like soft smeg shits.

 

With her here it only meant one thing. The Immortan was dead. They’d killed the only one who could ascend him to the gates of Valhalla. Without him, it wouldn’t matter if he died historic. _No_ , Slit willed his head to stop spinning as he thought. The Immortan, he was waiting at the gates for him, for all of his true War Boys. Slit just needed to hurry up and die historic before the Immortan found his existence mediocre and left him here.

 

Slit’s lips curled, his staples stretching his cheeks, pulling in a pain so small compared to everything else he barely felt it, but for the fact that he always loved the way his flesh pulled around them when he smiled. If anything it gave him pleasure to feel it.

 

“Traitor smeg!” he barked with gravel in his throat, seeing - with anger-fueled delight - when she turned sharply to catch his glare. He let his torn arm go free, each tense of his muscles as he ran to her exploding in pain, leaking blood and something not the color of blood, but he didn’t care. He’d go out historic trying to shredd her. Then the Immortan would ascend him. He’d be awaited and they’d all witness him.

 

Sand kicked up as he sprinted to her, watching with supreme pleasure as a look of disgust crossed her face, maybe even fear. What a sight he must have made - bloody, broken and still racing to shredd her where she stood. Nothing would stop him, not even a body not altogether whole or a head not completely solid. Life didn’t matter. He was a kamikrazy War Boy, not like Nux. Not like that smeg traitor. He’d go out historic, or he’d shredd her. 

 

He turned the corner, ready to rip her off the Gigahorse, but a betraying hand grabbed at his shoulder - another War Boy snarling in his face. Then another joined in, took him to the ground. Dirt filled his mouth and he gagged, spat it out, jerked up to shake loose. But a kick to his jaw knocked lose one of his teeth and he hissed, for a moment lost to the pain.

 

“Tie him down,” she ordered, watching him from the Gigahorse, that mark-less arm wrapped around her hip and a face the shape of the moon staring down at him from the shade of the cab. Slit stopped struggling, staring at the Breeder - watching her lips part and black eyes hold his gaze like he had gone for her and not the Imperator. There was fear and disgust but there was pity too and that made his body vibrate like an engine ready to blow.

 

But...Slit saw her in a brief moment of clarity. She was shiny - she was chrome, even though she looked like the color of rust. _Chrome rust..._

 

A sudden unforgiving pressure was lowered on his stub, already covered in sand - like little serrated knives slicing back and forth inside his exposed tissue. He howl when the boot came down on his torn limb. Nitro fuel rose up, combined with the hardy acids in his stomach. It coated his mouth in searing fire. He vomited to the side, feeling the heat of his expulsion covering the side of his face, his neck and shoulder. The pain - Glory but the pain was too much. He felt water run from his eyes when they twisted a heel into it and suddenly there was nothing but a weightless feeling that dropped him into blackness.

 

“We should leave him to the crows,” Toast muttered, holding onto Furiosa tighter, watching her from the seat when the woman stiffened.

 

“No, we’re bring him with us,” she said hard but low, only meant for Toast to hear and then she arched her back despite her pain and raised her voice,  “No one’s getting left behind! We bring back even the dead! They’ll live again on high!”

 

A roar of approval surround the Gigahorse and Toast peered back down at the one-armed War Boy, a streak of blood vomit leaked out his mouth. She would have assumed he’d died then and there, but his chest lifted, albeit shaky and uneven. They all looked the same to her, but she figured now - with only one arm - he’d be easier to spot if she ever did see him again. 

 

Her eyes followed him as the other War Boys pulled him up under his arms, his head falling forward, chin to chest as they put him in the open cab of one of the restored rigs. Other broken but alive War Boys filled the back, but even more were strapped to the car, the rims and fenders. All those ones dead. The Dag would plant them in the new soil, then plant the seeds when they eventually turned to soil themselves.

 

 _Food for our seedlings,_ The Dag had told her, rubbing her stomach. 

 

She had the few boys that passed while everyone had been gone brought to the Sun Gardens on their first day. Toast hadn’t wanted any part in touching them, but she’d watched from a stone carved palisade when they poured the dirt over them. She paid close attention to Dag after that and two days later, after watching and feeling a strange thrill under her skin, Furiosa had asked if she wanted to join her on the salvage run. 

 

There was no reason to say no, and she didn’t want to. Her sister’s were busy, repairing the minds of the War Boys and showing motherly attention to any hungy-for-love War Pup they could find. The Dag and her seeds and books, prayers and devotion held no interest for her either...and she was hovering like a War Pup too old to suckle but not old enough to be of any real use. 

 

A chance to escape the shift was welcome. 

 

She just wanted to load some guns and pretend she was useful as the road throttled under her arse in the Gigahorse - it was also pleasant to remember Joe’s faceless maw leaking in the space next to her, where Furiosa was now. Her mouth filled with saliva, ready for another spit on his carcass, but when she turned - caught up in her hate - there she was, settling into the seat and cranking the engine.

 

“They’ve already got the War Boy heading back to the Citadel. Told them to bring him back without us.”

 

Toast knew which War Boy she spoke of - the only one they’d been hoping to find. The one Capable had been calling their Liberator. 

 

_Without Nux we’d be losing a battle with half the Wasteland. He’s as much our Liberator as Furiosa...or the Fool. Maybe more…_

 

Toast didn’t agree as much about that, but it was hard to ignore the War Boy had spared them a lot of grief with his sacrifice, or would-be sacrifice. Only time would tell if the sod made it in the end. She had only gotten a glance at him, but he looked like more a corpse than when she first met him. It was hard to imagine these War Boys were still alive with the injuries they’d sustained.

 

The rest of these boys were just a bonus, or unfortunate like the one-armed one. 

 

That was a War Boy that should have been dead. He was a walking corpse. Thinking about his putrid stub made her sick - ill in the belly, which made her sweat thinking it could possible be a sprog of Joe’s growing in her womb. Angharad had always gotten sick before a sprog grew inside her. It’d be at least another week of two before any of them bled...and each feeling of sick made her knees weak with dread.

 

“How are you feeling?” 

 

Toast turned to Furiosa, lips parted and the sick rising to the surface. She swallowed it down and gave her a dead smile, “Just peachy,” before spitting bile out the window. 

 

The yellow plains seemed to never move as they sped across the wasteland, especially if she looked far enough away. Deep off the horizon there was the stain of burning guzzoline in Gastown. Nothing rose up from Bullet Farm, but that place could melt under the glare of the sun for all she cared. It was worse than the Citadel at it’s worst - no place for hope.

 

“How do you think they’ll build everything back?” she asked, staring at the faded black clouds. She imagined the reek of guzzoline and felt the nausea simmering down oddly enough, “Do you think they’ll really send a party out to take the Citadel back?”

 

Furiosa eyed the horizon once, hard and said, with nothing extra given, “They might.”

 

The idea made her nervous, but she’d never say so.

 

“That’s why we need everyone we can take in, right? It’s why that one with the arm is as good as anyone else - I mean,” she turned to watch Furiosa watching the Citadel come into view. Either her unintended insult wasn’t noticed or it was ignored. She felt like a smeg, but the sight of his arm… of his burnt body. After a swallowing silence Toast opened her mouth -

 

“It’s alright,” Furiosa whispered, turning the wheel of the Gigahorse, pulling in behind the Rig, shading them in it’s immense shadow. On the flatbed of the Rig she could see the War Boys holding on, some curled up like Pups, some holding others like her and her sisters held one another at times. _Like family, like brothers,_ she thought.

 

She couldn’t see the one-armed one, but knew he was on there somewhere, hidden by those conscious enough to be sitting up. Or maybe he was dead by now, it made her feel better to think he was. At least he’d be out of his misery.

 

A stark red stain amongst the white caught her eyes. She saw none other than the Doof Warrior perched on the rim of the flatbed, his halved Axe resting on his spread thighs. No one had told her the Doof was eyeless...it made her face screw up, unbelieving. It seemed impossible for him to be perched like he was, the hot unforgiving sand and the rig’s wheels just a slip away.

 

Toast swallowed something like nerves.

 

“Do you think they’ll make a new arm for him?” she had not thought about her question, just voiced it.

 

In the splitting hum of the Gigahorse she turned to Furiosa, eyeing her. The Imperator made a wry turn of her lips and gave her a look. It felt a bit like being a child when she looked at her like that, but it had only once felt bad, every time it reminded her of the small memory of a mother, maybe not even her own...maybe not even a someone. But the idea of one at any rate.

 

“If there’s time.”

 

“I think…” Toast rubbed some sweat off her face, watching the horizon again, “...I think I’d like to see that.”

 

“Maybe you’ll make him one,” Furiosa said - a strange soothing urge in her voice that made Toast excited - made her insides clench with something like purpose. The idea had been a fanciful one. Being in the garage, welding metals, buffing things chrome - making and sketching out schematics  - anything but bullets. The thought made her heart beat loud in her ears. 

 

She scoffed instead, “Yeah right.”

 

Toast looked back to her again. The hope in her eyes must have been evident though, because she witnessed Furiosa smile; amused, “If you can hold you own among them,” she nodded to the bruised and broken War Boys, swaying on the Rig with pain and starvation in their faces, “then you can make your own way.”

 

 _You’re free,_ Toast heard her whisper, or maybe she whispered it to herself.

 

It was true though. They were free and she could find her purpose herself - there was no need to search for approval, or to be bowed and bent under someone else’s rules. To be her own woman, her own person for once. For the first time - she felt like sobbing, but she didn’t sob, even at her darkest of times and as the Citadel grew larger in the distance, she made herself smile until she felt it in her heart as much as she did it stretching her cheeks.

 

 

 

 

 

Near fifty kilometers away, Capable laid still within a Pup pile - they’re strong smell of fresh war paint helped her sleep, but she hadn’t slept much last night. One of the Pups, maybe no more than four was curled tight against her belly, shivering with the remnants of a night fever. Too jittery to really sleep, but too weak to be awake. She hummed gently, stroking down his sweat-stained head with a rag, gentle of the oozy eyes as he tilted his skinny face up to her touch. 

 

If she let her eyes go fuzzy it was easy to imagine Nux so small and vulnerable, looking to her with such awe from just a simple touch.

 

None of them had be blessed with a touch that wasn’t meant to weed out the weakest of them. Had they ever been hugged or kissed? Had any of them, even the War Boys?

 

She could still feel where Nux had kissed her cheek and still she wondered where he learned to even want to do that. Maybe he’d seen her kiss her sister’s cheeks that way, or perhaps he felt it in his bones...or even stranger but more hopeful, maybe the War Boys were not so naive when it came to comfort and physical affection as she had feared.

 

Beanut stirred against her, grabbing at her loose shawl, bringing it to his nose and sniffing. Another Pup’s leg jerked in his sleep and somewhere in the pile she heard one of them wheezing with each breath. It would take time to clean their bodies of the poison they ingested day in and day out, maybe longer to help them all realize how to properly take care of themselves, but they took to her quick, welcomed her in their pile and reached for her already when the night fever's gripped them, or even just the usual terrors that children found in their dreams. Their minds were easy to reach, but their bodies would take time - it the opposite for the War Boys. Nux took to her quick, though...no one was quite like Nux.

 

For now the water given to them freely was helping, and the food The Dag and her eager helping hands had collected from the green things - the plants. Even just a comforting hand on them seemed enough at times. They slept with sated bellies now.

 

Capable had not realized how many crops were hidden among the Citadel. Before she had thought it was just the high-tops where the green grew, but there were hydroponics, cave gardens with fungus and even deeper down were the mud crops that not even The Dag knew how worked. 

 

“Mother…” one of them whispered on her bare shoulder, patting her quickly but soft, not intentionally soft he was just weak. Most of them were too weak.

 

One of the half-dead War Boys told her most of the Pups didn’t make it past their third year. Only the hard ones made it and even fewer of those were ever promoted to War Boys. It was still amazing Nux had lived through all of it, to be a War Boy - to then die...even though it was for all of them. She’d held onto hope - hope he’s survived. She had witnessed him live through enough, and he’d confessed the gates had closed on his thrice before. It seemed silly to think him alive, but she’d insisted and now that the salvage run was out there...she stopped hoping. 

 

If she didn’t hope, it wouldn’t hurt as much when they came back with his corpse.

 

“Mummy…” she turned to one of the Pups, Piker. His one large eye staring wet down at her, on his knees with her dirty hair in his hands. The hollow space where his other eye never formed creased when he bunched his brows together. 

 

“What is it?”

 

“It be da’ rig. I can’s hurrs it,” he shifted, laying himself over her waist. He made a grab for her breasts for the fourth time but she caught his little wrist and gave it a kiss as weightless as a cloud, shaking her head. 

 

“They’ve only been gone a day. They won’t be back yet. We’re too deep to hear it when it comes back anyway,” she whispered.

 

For a moment he looked broken, but then he saw where her lips had met his wrist and he settled down, resting his head in the dip of her waist. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, but it was the truth. No point in planting false hope. She felt him shiver, saw his eye shut and thought for a moment he’d fallen back asleep, but he whispered back, “...feels it in da walls...Liburatas gonna need me.”

 

Capable swallowed the lump in her throat, she felt the tears sting in her eyes again, it was amazing she had any left to give anymore.

 

“If they do...find him...there won’t be anything you can do that the Vuvalini can’t do,” he frowned, but she smiled and stroked his brow, thumbing the worry-line down smooth, “I need you to be healthy. That is a big enough responsibility for now.”

 

Her heart ached, picturing Nux’s grinning face behind her closed eyes and somewhere inside she hoped Piker was right. She hoped more than anything…that Furiosa would bring him back, not as a corpse and not broken beyond all repair. She wanted Toast to rush in, with a cheeky grin and tell her ‘ _We got your War Boy, good as new!’_

 

When the first tear fell she wrapped her arms around Beanut, still hot to the touch. She hugged him close and let the rest of her hopelessness leak as quietly and silent as she could muster.

 

_Not a scratch on him, just like you said yourself - boy is Immortal._


	3. Hybrid Moments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to twiggzzler and Liisiko for the wonderful comments. They are a pleasure to read and absorb. <3
> 
> I fell for Nux first since he's like a feral puppy with Capable and then came my love of Slit, since he's such a righteous prick (and that scene where he's begging to go on Gigahorse made me want to hug him, coo to him like a pitiful, obnoxious child) and soon followed my worship of Coma The Doof Warrior, he needs no reasons to love really.
> 
> This is what my mind needs after the credits roll. Please, enjoy and let me know what you think down in the comments, if you find the time of course. This will be my first real go at writing in awhile and I've got it planned out to be a rather large endeavor. I have no Beta but myself (which is sometimes terrible) so please forgive any mistakes. I do apologize in advance.
> 
> I also listened to nothing but Misfits while writing this chapter...
> 
> Enjoy!

She sleeps hard now, but fitful. Once she’d been woken up by a Warpup she gripped too tightly in the throes of a nightmare. The past three nights it’s been the same dream on repeat.

 

 _Nux is climbing the War Rig, sweaty and dirty, climbing the engine to get back to her. She’s got her arm extended for him and he’s so close - and then Rictus shoves a fist through his chest, straight through the raised V8 and instead of a heart he’s got a fist full of wire and blood_ and that’s the last she see’s of the Warboy.

 

The nightmare never changes...it’s the same each night and it tortures her multiple times. Wake, sleep, repeat. Over and over again.

 

When she wakes now it’s because Beanut is wiggling hard in her arms, pushing at her chest to escape her delirious hold.

 

“Mum le’ go! The drums’s bangin’!” Capable is still dazed from the nightmare - Nux was halfway over the War Rig when she see the distraught look on Beanut’s face. The war paints smeared around his eyes and mouth from his fever. She has a moment to be thankful he’s warm and not hot in her arms before he breaks free from her, jumping to his feet and racing off through the corridor. 

 

Other pups around her are scrambling to their feet, forgetting their shoes in their haste. 

 

“What’s going on?” She asks, raising up to her elbows, watching the chaos around her. Drumming bounces off the stone walls, making her ears throb in time. She doesn’t see Piker, or the youngest that didn’t have a name until she gave him one - Rowtag.

 

She’s sitting up, frantic as her pups are racing off, when one of them falls into her, hugging her tight around the neck, choking the breath out of her. Capable peels him off and holds him close, “What’s happening, Zeb?”

 

“Warboys says they bring back survivors, got one of ‘em in the Organic’s ol’ place. More to come too!”

 

Capable’s heart sinks into her stomach - it’s hope she feels, but it’s so fragile she’s frightened by the feeling. Her older pup tugs at her shoulders, trying to get her up even though he’s so thin she can’t imagine him lifting up a brother his size, let alone her.

 

He tugs her harder, heedless, “Come on, Mum...they needs hands for helping. Blood to give, blood to get!” She stands on her own, his arms still clinging to her, wrapping now around her middle like a brace.

 

Inside her chest, her heart slaps fast against her ribs, taking the breath out of her lungs so when she starts following the quick sea of pups, she’s focused more on not passing out than what she might find at the Organics. Zeb, thin and sickly, releases her and snatches up her hand, pulling her forward, faster, stumbling as her body starts to go numb with anticipation that’s also dread and hope and fear and a deep feeling of wanting to hide away from the world.

 

It’s so loud - the chorus of drums and screaming Warboys and Warpups. Orders are shouted, names are called...chants of _V8_ and _Witness_ are also a distant sound that only brings the fear to the forefront of her mind. They only shout such things when there are dead or will be soon. Her bare heels dig into the ground, and Zeb tugs her, pulling her along as she resists weakly.

 

“Come on!”

 

 _No, she doesn’t want to see._ She wants to hide back under the blankets with her pups - the nightmares are better than the truth. It’s easier to pretend he’s alive maybe, to hope from far away than to get closer and closer to it - to what might not be him, or his corpse...or could be him, alive and whole. It hurts to keep on forward, to take each step as fast as Zeb runs.

 

_“Get that one over here! Bring the splints!”_

 

_“You! Hitch up the Blood Bag - the gold-hair smeg with the limp!”_

 

Capable can only make out demands in the throng of noises and bodies. She sees some looking her way when she enters the Organics, grinning madly at her as they race to and fro. It’s chaos, utter chaos but the bodies all seem to be heading to one place at the back of the Catacombs. Down there the commands are louder and urgent.

 

_“Feed the needle!”_

 

Zeb tugs on her hand but she can’t move, won’t move. A panic grips her chest and takes away the oxygen flowing to her legs, suffocating her pores until they start leaking sweat and terror. No, she won’t go.

 

_“Water! We need water!”_

 

But Zeb is not alone, more of her pups join him, pushing at her rear and taking her other arm in two hands. Piker is at her right, for once not reaching for her breasts, begging for milk. They’re pushing her into the sea and she’s not strong enough to see the bottom. Can’t hold her breath that long. The sea parts for her though, and through a haze of unshed tears she sees him…

 

He’s there.

 

He’s alive and he’s looking right at her. Those blue eyes are grey, bloodshot - white flakes of skin peel from his lips and half of his body is bruised black and blue. His nails are broken and bloody. Larry and Barry are sliced open and weeping and she sees a group of pups splinting his foot which is swollen and dripping blood. It’s like her nightmares when Maddie appears - the old Vuvalini - and shoves a needle up his arm, feeding something milky into his body and he’s goes out just like that as though she just killed him softly. 

 

“No!” Capable shouts, raising her arms to shake loose her pups, picking up speed as her heart shatters.

 

Nux is limp on the pallet. His arm slips off the edge and hangs like a dead thing in the air. Tears fall, dribble off her chin and soak down into the fabric of her shirt. She can’t breath through the snot in her nose or through the sobs that seized her throat. This pain is what hope feels like when it’s killed and gutted right in front of you.

 

Inches separate her and Nux, when suddenly the old woman grips her tightly, digging fingers so deeply into her arms she yelps.

 

“Alive! Put him under,” she shouts into her ear, but she barely hears it. All she has are eyes for him, for Nux as he lays limp, slowly being filled with needles and hands holding things she doesn’t want to see anywhere near him.

 

“But…” she whimpers, “he’s…”

 

“Not dead.” The Vuvalini takes her into old strong arms, steering her face under her fleshy chin. Capable works her cheek flat against her chest. She doesn’t want to tear her eyes off him - it feels like he’ll disappear if she so much as blinks. More tears falls, soaking her lips and tongue when she opens her mouth to let loose a series of desperate cries.

 

“I gave him something for the pain, he’s out, but he ain’t dead yet, Red. Go. We ain’t got use for you like this.”

 

Capable shakes her head, struggling to get to Nux as a Warboy starts rubbing down his filthy body with a damp cloth, only exposing more bruises and cuts - more damage that terrifies her.

 

The Vuvalini clicks her tongue, gestures to someone behind her and then hands are gently pulling her away. She resists, screams that she’s not going anywhere. Something behind them all opens and there's twice as much noise and screaming and chaos. 

 

_“We got Warboy’s needin’ bloodn’ hands!”_

 

_“We got broken Warboy’s need fixin’!”_

 

In this commotion the hands around her grow weak for a second, but a second’s all she needs and she rips herself from the hands as soon as she feels them gentle, flinging herself at Nux as they start cutting at Larry and Barry. His skin under her hands is cold, like death. She pets his face frantically, feeling the past few days of pain and loss melt enough that she feels him warm against her in the back of the War Rig, curled under a blanket watching the stars.

 

The moment doesn’t last long. Those ugly hands are back around her waist and another pair pull her fingers from his face. She’s tossed over a wide shoulder and taken away. Capable screams in defiance, kicks - seeing the worried face of her Warpups watching her go - and then she feels suddenly so so calm. The noises fade and she knows just before the darkness comes that she’s going to pass out, and he won’t be there when she comes to. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dag sees the party returning from the perch at the top of the Citadel. One of the Milk Mothers is by her side, twisting her freshly cleansed hair into tight braids - she is the one who first saw them and now Dag stands with her hands flat on the warm stone ledge, seeing the dust clouds the encroaching party distills into the horizon. 

 

The familiar sight of the Gigahorse, all chrome and glinting under the sun, is an unpleasant sight, but it is bearable knowing Furiosa and Toast inhabit it’s flushed interior. Dag has no love for anything shiny and chrome, only green and dirt. She’s a convert of the Keeper of Seeds and her time back has been spent reading all the wordburgers with the words, _plant, garden, soil, farm_ or any of those in between on the cover.  She will not be as Toast, waiting for her chance to get her hands on something powerful and hard, nor has she patience for the Warpups as Capable or Cheedo. 

 

She’ll have enough of pups soon, she thinks, touching the very delicate swell of her stomach - so flat still. She’s so flat she thinks it may be just her imagination that she feels a bump at all. 

 

No more is she afraid for its gender. No fear if it’s a girl to be thrown to the Wretched, or a boy raised as a Warlord to the devil. She still doesn’t like the idea of Joe living on through her sprog but the thing inside her is blameless…and she’s not strong enough to try what Angharad tried.

 

 _Innocence,_ she whispers on air that tastes like dust from down low.

 

She stands watch silently, feeling the wind and tasting it in her lung. The Milk Mother who still remains nameless continues her braiding until half her head is covered in them. The chubby fingers of the woman strokes the rest of her free hair, folds it over her shoulder and wraps it loose with a weave of the braids until the weight of her hair is resting solely on one side. Dag smiles at the Milk Mother, stroking the length of her delicate work as an expression of her gratitude.

 

None of the women Joe sucked dry speak, but their eyes are more expressive than words sometimes and when Dag sees the woman’s grey eyes flutter - the creases underneath deepening - she smiles reassuringly, “Don’t worry. We’ll hide here until the bedlam has ceased.”

 

“We wait,” Dag corrects when the Milk Mother’s brows run together in confusion.

 

When The Dag turns back to the Fury Road, the party is all but a faded trail of desert, their tails leading into the Citadel. For Capable’s sake she hopes they’ve found her Warboy. The thought of never seeing her smile again is a tragic one…though she was the first to tell her time would heal the wounds. Those had been her last words to her, she’s not seen her sister since.

 

 

 

 

 

Coma sit’s on a stone bench, the sounds of fretting and turmoil thick in his ears. Blood is on the air and it’s taste is gummy but it doesn’t matter when he strums his Axe, pressing his cheek to the lone frame. It needs tuning and the dust has suffocated it...without his amps the sounds already dampened, but it’s still a worry stone amidst the frantic energy around him. 

 

His wounds are minor. A few broken fingers, aching feet and shoulders. He’s dehydrated, but this is nothing new and the headache that comes harder and deeper isn’t a concern when coupled against the missing limbs and open stomachs that plague the others.

 

There is no need for rushing - he simply needs to wait his turn.

 

“Water,” a small voice beside him says and something that tastes of wet metal is pushed to his lips.

 

He jerks back without thinking and the body near him revolts in response. Water, a single drop wets his lip and he lays his Axe against his arm and thigh turning to the body he knows is still there. 

 

Reaching out with his healthy hand he waits for the cup to touch his fingers and when it does he tips it down his throat immediately, chugging the dregs of life without question. The cup is snatch out of his hand when it’s empty, but it’s filled again out of what sounds like a larger bucket of water and another cup is handed to him again, nudged to his knuckles.

 

By the time the small body leaves, his belly is full to the brim. He can feel the Aqua Cola sloshing as he shifts on the stone. Coma can’t recall a time he’s been so full in his life. The pains are sliced in half by the time it’s his turn to be fixed. 

 

Normally he would be filled with some blood and water, then shoved back in his cage to wait for the next stage to open for him.

 

This time he is stripped - someone tries to pry his Axe from him but he bites, aware of how ghastly he can appear from words whispered around him. Those huddling close reek of unease, but they leave his Axe alone as they take his fingers and snapped them unceremoniously back in place. The crack he hears is almost worse than the pain that laces up his wrist to the ball of his shoulder. And they ache when the splints are wrapped snug around the three digits. Pain throbs like it originates from his heart, pumping horror blood around the broken bits and licking with tongues made of acid. 

 

“They’ll mend,” he hisses - it’s a not a question but he gets a reply all the same.

 

“They will - might mend stiff but they’ll mend.” It’s a woman’s voice. The tone is tired, impatient and haggard. An old voice. Despite it’s irritation in his ears it’s not wholly without warmth.

 

“You hurt here?” fingers are shoved into a spot under his shoulder and the pain is intense. But pain, in any aspect, has always felt such. Coma nods, breathing through his teeth. Drool runs down his chin as the bony fingers keep pressing a line of pain down his spin and around his ribs. 

 

“Got a nice bruise - long as my arm I’d say. Good thing you can’t see it, might make you sick.”

 

He manages a grin despite the discomfort, and he feels some of tension between them melt. Suffering in silence is what he prefers so he does just that as he’s wrapped tight around his upper chest - something in his side pulls and cracks and he can’t breathe for long enough that he feels that warm fuzz close in around his skull. But it lets up and he suffers the fresh pain of a lungful of air before a needle pricks his arm.

 

“Bruised rib, maybe a fracture. Did you hear a click?”

 

Coma nods, licking the drool from his lips. A sweat breaks out on his skin, pooling from underneath the paint as the pain becomes a hot burn like he’s been fed a gallon of guzzoline. 

 

“Figures, you’re the seventh already with a busted chest. No sleeping on that side for awhile, no unnecessary movement. If you start wheezing or hacking blood we’re gonna need to pop you open. Got me, Blind Boy?”

 

“A Hag speaks and a Boy listens,” he replies, grinning despite how his limbs shake in weakness and pain. There is a sneering curse, but nothing else as he’s left with blood replacing what he’s lost and burnt up. More water is put in his hand but he doesn’t yet drink it. More on his stomach and he’d retch - the idea with the damage in his ribs is unpleasant.

 

Silence swallows up the previous gutter noise. Soon there is nothing but the sounds of treated pain and the shuffle of feet moving back and forth down the long corridor of broken Warboys.

 

They are lucky to be alive, but some of them have been cursing themselves for not dying historic. There is one close to him that is hissing like a lizard - cursing the Breeders to dust and when he’s not he’s groaning and tossing. Coma thinks it might be the one with the missing arm. If it is and he’s awake through all the trauma then perhaps he has a right to be so angry. 

 

Coma inhales deeply, filtering out the smell of blood, of rot and tears and underneath all that is the scent of burnt flesh. Yes, Coma thinks, it’s the one who wanted to shredd more than he wanted to live. His splinted fingers are stiff and pounding still, but he is thankful he still has both his hands. Draped over his groin is his Axe, and he strokes it, strumming the chords once and then again until he’s picking a melody - heedless of the racket he might be making for all the sore heads littered around him. For now he can still play his Axe. The Warboy to his right is not so lucky as he.

 

 

 

 

When Capable wakes up she is surrounded by her Warpups; Piker is curled up on her left, Zeb between her legs and using her stomach as a pillow, Beanut is draped over her left and down across her ankles is Rowtag. They’re all asleep and none of them are burning with fever but their combined heat makes her feel sticky and dizzy.

 

“My, sweetlings…” she whispers, unable to judge how long her bodies been under, but the Catacombs are silent and cold and she fears it’s been too long. She needs to find Nux - needs to touch his face to know he’s still there. To know it wasn’t a new nightmare or a dream or a hallucination...she needs…

 

“Mum?” it’s Rowtag, crawling up between Zeb and Piker, both of which barely move but for a little snore from Zeb. Her youngest is touching her face in the dim light, putting a chubby hand to her forehead like she does them, though she does it to check for fever and they do it to her as a way of showing concern it seems. Like a hello...almost.

 

“Help me move your brothers,” she tells, and reassures him when his hands fist in her shirt, “I’ll be back, I promise. Now help me, please.” And he does. Only Piker wakes up, pawing at her breasts, asking for milk. She pulls his wrists into her hands and kisses his cheek, shushing him back beside his brothers where he sniffles until that eventually becomes gentle snores.

 

Capable rises slowly and goes to leave but Rowtag is clutching her thigh, asking to come - to protect her.

 

_“Please, Mums?”_

 

She eyes the open corridor and then the little white pup at her leg. Quickly she plucks him up and rests him on her hip, following the dimly remembered path to the Organics as he tugs her ratty braid loose, untangling the knots with his fat fingers.

 

It’s eerily quiet in the Organics. In the distance she can hear the noises of the hurt, but it isn’t until she turns around a stone wall and is greeted by dozens of bodies laid flat on the floor, some hunched on benches and other raised up on gurneys, wired with tubes. Most of them are asleep, or maybe dead... 

 

She can see a lone figure at the end of the hallway, decked in dark leather and buckles. Maddie, Capable thinks, but can’t be sure and doesn’t really want to get her attention after earlier. 

 

When Rowtag starts whining about the smell, Capable puts a finger to her lips and shushes him softly. He mimics her, smiling, but remains quiet.

 

She steps into the fray, hefting Rowtag against her hip carefully. He’s holding tight to her hair as she walks forward, eyeing all the damaged Warboys - searching for Nux. When she gets halfway down the narrow room she falters. _What if he’s not here? Where is he, if not here...or could he have ever been?_ _A nightmare after all?_

 

A cool spot touches her skin and she holds Rowtag to her all the more firmly as she picks up one foot, then the other and then -

 

“You’re one of those fuckin’ Breeders. Immortan wasn’t good enough for you lot…” the words are so hateful she feels them like a punch - though she’s never been struck before. Capable imagines this is what it feels like. “...had to take him - took Nux too. My arm. You Breeders took everything.”

 

 _Nux..._ she thinks. They took him - _meaning he’s gone. He’s dead?_ She looks at the Warboy in horror as he rolls over into the dim light. He’s covered in soaked bandages and his arm’s been wrapped in gauze at the elbow, strapped with buckles at his bicep. He’s still dirty...and he’s naked - which makes him all the more terrifying.

 

Rowtag wraps his arms around her neck, huddling around her as though he’s going to save her if the Warboy goes for her. The Warpup keeps her from cowering, oddly enough. _I am Capable of anything_ , she chants to herself.

 

A Warboy without eyes stares at her from the bench to the left of the hate filled one - something about him strikes her. But she can’t focus on him when the other is hissing at her - “Traitorous smeg-bitch!”

 

She gives him no response. No words, because she has none. He’s angry, he’s hurt and he’s lost Nux same as her. The knowledge of it all makes her wonder if it was all worth it. If they’d stayed Immortan’s breeding stock Nux might still be alive. He could have enjoyed more of his life. They could have waited a few more years maybe...for him…

 

“Fuckin’ shine, but not shine enough for me.”

 

Her fingers curl into Rowtag, holding him so close she can feel his little heart beat along her arms and chest. This Warboy can’t harm her as he is. She’s safe...so she walks away knowing he won’t follow, steady and calmer than she really is to Maddie at the end of the hall. Capable is capable enough to see Nux for the last time, before he’s given to The Dag.

 

“Maddie,” she whispers.

 

The Vuvalini turns around slowly - a look of half-life in her eyes. There are so many Warboys and only her and barely Warboys to help her tend to them. Her wrinkled hands are stained in blood and she doesn’t want to ask her for another favor among so many today, but she needs to see him.

 

“I want to see Nux...be- before he’s taken to Dag, _please._ ”

 

Maddie arches a grey eyebrow and the exhaustion seems to leave her momentarily before she’s smiling and chuffing, “Your boy ain’t going to the soil yet. He’s got lots o’ time to mend, but he’ll pull through.”

 

Rowtag gives a sudden dramatic yelp in her arms, pumping his little fists, tilting her off balance as the knowledge sinks in slowly. _He’s alive. Not dead...not lost!_

 

“Where?!” Capable demands, forgetting she’s among wounded Warboys trying to sleep through the pain and the sick. Some of them awaken, already stirring after Rowtag’s noisy celebration. They shift and crack behind her and Maddie grabs at her arm, pulling her through an opening as the pained curses start up. She can’t hear them though, and Rowtag is practically bouncing in her arms, fisting her hair and whooping with glee.

 

“Hush that brat! He’ll wake the whole lot of them,” Maddie hisses, pulling her still ever forward.

 

“Rowtag, please,” Capable hushes him, pinching his cheek as she starts to grin. He grins back, all chubby cheeks and glowing amber eyes set inside circles of black.

 

“In here.”

 

Capable rounds a corner behind Maddie and there is Nux, lying flat on his back with a sheet laid low over his hips, covering his groin but exposing his legs. A bag of clear fluids hangs from above his head, fed into him via a tubed needle in his arm. She almost misses a Milk Mother slouching in a chair, asleep, beside him. The portly woman’s blood is linked to Nux with another long tube, coiled from the ceiling and attached to him at the neck. A disgusting bundle of raw stitches frame where Larry and Barry used to be. His foot is wrapped with metal rods and he’ll be pleased by the curved set of stitches running up his side when he wakes. He is more bruise than boy she realizes sadly.

 

“Nux…” she whispers, stepping carefully to his side, shifting Rowtag to her other hip so she can brush her fingers along Nux’s cheekbone. He is warm - not cold. _Not dead._

 

“That boy won’t wake up for awhile - shouldn’t either.”

 

Capable understands if he needs to sleep. _Recover,_ she tells him silently - _get better and it can be the two of us again. Always._

 

He looks peaceful - almost like he’s resting serenely and for now it’s enough to wash the terror from her insides - to replace them with hope that doesn’t hurt.

 

He’s alive. He isn’t lost.


	4. Far From Any Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to Zoadgo, twiggzzler and Liisiko for the wonderful comments. They are a pleasure to read and absorb. <3

 

 

 

 

It was a long day and a long night that Toast had spend with blood and guts, broken bones, pain and death. Four of the Warboys didn’t make it - one of them passing away from the blood loss of two amputated legs. The death she’d witnessed on the Fury Road had always been far away, enough that sometimes she could close her eye and pretend it wasn’t real. Joe’s death hadn’t even felt real - too good to be true. This time she’d watched the life leave them. This time, Toast couldn’t pretend. 

 

Tonight she’s got herself sitting on the lift, overlooking the night-touched patch of land between the two cliffs. It’s hard to make out the Wretched, now sleeping and satiated with water and food. Some Warpups, old enough to be Warboys themselves are cleaning down the pursuit vehicles behind her, talking in that weird lingo they have. 

 

Blood makes her skin sticky when she curls her fingers, staring down at her raw palms.

 

It was a hard day.

 

Toast sees that armless one when she closes her eyes - how he didn’t pass out, even when they peeled off the layer of rotten, sand-crusted skin over his burns. Didn’t fade away when they had to cut away the strings of skin around his nub and douse the rawness in whatever concoction the Vuvalini had made to burn away infection. Refused the milk that the others had begged for. It made her sick afterwards. 

 

She doesn’t know what to do now. There’s a tired ache all over her body, but she knows if she lays down she’ll just lay awake until morning. Too much has happened in these few days and it’s been a wonder she’s slept at all through it - though her sleep has been restless and full of flashbacks from the road. Tonight, if she did sleep, she’d have new nightmares, of that she’s certain.

 

A few Warboys are laughing at some strange joke behind her and the sound of it is nice, but something about it makes her feel bitter too. Toast wants to laugh - she never did much of it, even at the best of times. Too angry - too few reasons to laugh.

 

The moon is a half of what is should be. Dag is probably watching it as she is now, but what the Dag sees and what she sees is probably very different. Right now, Toast only sees a low light in the sky and it’s not majestic because she saw those boys die today - watched them suffer so long and then just...die. Nothing tonight could hold any luster. Those Warboys won’t ever seen this again...so why should Toast acknowledge it. _Why enjoy anything?_

 

Sometimes it surprises her anyone even bothers living anymore…

 

“What are you doing so close to the edge?”

 

It’s Cheedo, but Toast doesn’t turn around, only shrugs and kicks her legs over the ledge, feeling the open air between her sore toes. It would be a long way down - but it’d feel like flying for a little while.

 

“Capable’s awake...the Pups told me they had to pull her away from Nux when they brought him in. I didn’t see it, but...they said it was sad.”

 

“No shit,” Toast replies, for a second she wants to take the curt words back - to apologize for being so...flippant and rude, but she only wiggles her toes and breathes.

 

“Come back in, please. I don’t like you so close...you might fall.”

 

“Or jump.”

 

“Don’t say that,” there is a desperation and maybe some tears in Cheedo’s voice that makes Toast twist around to see her sister. A Warpup is at her side, a hand in her skirts, watching a group of older ones appraisingly as they polish their chrome, making it shine. Cheedo’s face is distraught, watching her, her lower lip quivering.

 

“I didn’t mean it like that. You just - you haven’t seen what I’ve seen today. I’m just in a bad mood is all.”

 

That’s her excuse and it’s a good one. It’s honest enough too. There’s no need to tell Cheedo she doesn’t know what to do with her life now that she has one to live. Her fingers are bloody. She doesn’t want them to always be red. Toast want’s her hands to work metal, to build and create. There’s so much shit in the world and she wants to create something useful and beautiful out of it all. But where to start? How to do it all? - and what’s the point if everyone dies in the end?

 

“Please,” Cheedo whispers and it’s such a pleading sound that Toast consents to it and gets to her knees, her feet and then follows her sister with an extended hand, not saying a word as Cheedo smiles and tugs her away from the ledge, her back to the moon.

 

Inside it’s cold, but Cheedo’s dressed in layers, warm for the night and the pup by her side has a ratty blanket draped around his shoulders, looking sleepy and warm. Toast rises to her toes and gives Cheedo a kiss to her cheek, “I’m going to see if Maddie needs help. I’m not sleeping tonight.”

 

When Cheedo looks like she’ll protest Toast shakes her head, forces a smile and tells her, “Get some sleep.”

 

The Organics smells like when she left it - of rot and death. It’s a full minute later of inhaling the stench that Toast can manage a breath without feeling like she needs to toss up her meal.

 

On the way down to Maddie she passes by the Warboy with the missing arm, it’s hard to not look at him, especially when he’s making a point to let her know he’s glaring at her, leaning forward on his gurney, snarling and hissing. Toast imagines getting the jump on him with a needle of that milk Maddie keeps in the bottles - she pictures stabbing it in his neck and telling him _‘you’re welcome’_.

 

This smeg needs sleep, more so than she does. Hate seems to have kept him alive and now it keeps him awake. If he sleeps he won’t die, maybe he needs to be reminded of that.

 

Toast tries, she really does - tries to just ignore him but he calls her a _rusted Breeder_ and she’s been cultured enough to know it’s meant to insult her worse than the real insult of being called a Breeder does. 

 

“I can’t be any worse than a Lancer without a Lancer’s arm,” she whispers furiously, careful still not to wake up those poor Warboys that have the common sense to sleep after their grievous injuries. This one is thicker than most, and so hateful it makes Toast’s skin feel like it’s frying in the sun.

 

Her insult has quieted him, but it’s done more than that.

 

“What are you- are you crying?” she looks, unsure but sure that they’re not suppose to do that - not suppose to cry like tiny Warpups. This one, she can see now, is crying even if it’s silently. The low light down the hall catches the moisture as it slides down, falling in the crevice where a nasty staple is keeping his flesh together. She’s not sure what to do. A part of her thinks it serves him right, but another part - the part that worked her fingers raw trying to save them - wants to reach out and touch him. All they had was Joe and his stupid doctrine. A promise for eternal life after this one was up and now this Warboy is broken, shattered... _useless._ What is he suppose to do with his life now?

 

Toast leans in, a meter away and sees herself reflected in his eyes...and it changes _everything_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Dag sleeps with the herbs, finding that the smell of lavender keeps the nightmares away. It’s the second night she’s shred her clothes and lain naked with the buds tickling her bare skin. Sometimes an insect crawls along her and she enjoys the delicate little touch of legs and antennae tasting her skin. Above her, the moon is halved and it seems like years since the road - years of tending to the green things, of helping the harvest flourish but it’s only been a dozen nights or so since the party came back with the broken and battered Warboys. 

 

She’s not gone down but for a bathe days ago. The fruit sustains her, the water pumped up from below to water the crops does so as well and the shade of the trees, leaves of the plants is her shelter. For so long she’s been owned and used. Never touched by the sun for years until that day...now she never wants to leave it’s warmth or the moons cool glow. They’ll take her kicking and screaming from this place of her worship. 

 

Here, without the belts, without the stains of abuse, she can stroke her flesh and do as she pleases. 

 

It’s nearly dawn now and the soft music of crickets is at it’s peak - scratching along the air. She read once that the sound they made was to attract mates. This, she sighed, was how they breeded. The sweet music of breeding - of love. Though she wondered if insects loved like she could. Like she wanted. 

 

Soaking in the soil and grass, Dag rolls onto her belly, letting the wet earth cool her. The dizzying urge to stroke her flesh curls down in her abdomen. She reached the skies once already tonight, just after the sun went down and though she shifts and feels her flesh sore, she wants to find the feeling again. So she turns to her side, lifts a bare leg and strokes a line down her knee to the thatch of hair at her apex. _Hot and wet...and free._

 

The crickets chirp and lull - sway with her heavy breaths. Her touch is tender at first, so she lets her fingers linger, just barely skimming down the dew. Eventually the desire in her grows greater than the discomfort of her well-used flesh. She presses firm and circles as the insects buzz loudly, mixing with the sound of her blood rushing in her ears. 

 

Out here, alone, she does not hide her sounds as the pleasure surfaces so strongly, gripping and suffocating in a way she never wants to end. It was so enjoyable to reach this stage of sensation, pause and enjoy the slow dissipation, then begin again until she couldn’t take anymore and reached the sky. This morning she does not tease herself - it’s over quickly. She chases it until her leg shakes and she can’t help letting it fall, trying still to work her fingers between them until the pleasure is too brutal to follow any more.

 

Dag deflates within a cove of lavender, mint and something so sweet it at first made her sick, now the combination of smells is just as pleasant as the aftereffects of her self-pleasure.

 

The music of the garden, the scents and whatever the sweet feeling is called in her limbs lulls her back into sleep, so slowly she doesn’t hear the soft, retreating touch of bare feet on the stone. 

 

When she awakens there is a man in red, sitting cross legged in front of her, grinning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nux sees stars even before he opens his eyes. They’re bright and glaring - like sparks from an engine about to blow and they sting behind his eyes like a burning so acute he’s forced to open them to the darkness. It still hurts but there’s a dim glow of a panel, flashing buttons of green and fire and beside that is a low bunk, piled to the brim with Warpups. A long line of red is sticking out…touching the ground.

 

In the dark he can make out a thin hand, resting on the back of a pup and the curve of a long leg bent up from the pile.

 

_Capable…?_

 

He shifts, eager to pull away the pups and uncover the shine, but something pulls him back with a heavy click of chain. They’ve bound him to the gurney, clamped him down by the blood tube curling into the crotch of his arm. Nux sits up, ignoring the pain and pull of something like stitches on his side. Swallowing is hard and his tongue feels like sand, but the worst is how heavy his head feels - like an engine sitting on a rusted bay. It feels like his head is going to sink into his shoulders and down within his stomach, burning through his body until it plops out the end of him. 

 

 _It’s a fever. Just a fever._ He’s had the feeling before, sometimes worse, but the feeling mashed together with everything else that hurts and burns makes it feel like the worst. Inside his mouth his  tongue feels like it’s growing, filling his mouth until his jaw aches and he doesn’t know what else to do than try and detach himself from the bed - to go to the pup pile like when he was a pup himself. Slit would hold him sometimes when the fevers were this bad. Nux needs something touching him, just anything to take him mind from the sensations he hates and fears. And he’s sure Capable is waiting in that pile for him, _so shiny, so chrome and soft._

 

His disrepair of the chain makes noise though, lots of it and when he can’t get his fingers - now lighter in color for some reason - to cooperate with the locks he rattles it, making the bunk on wheels shift and skid. The sound is like a knife in his ears, reaching into the center of his head like shrapnel.

 

_“Nux!”_

 

Nux turns around quickly, vision cutting momentarily with the motion, but when it comes back he can see Capable shifting sleepy Warpups over her, taking one with a hand on her breast into her arms, putting him on the floor before the little thing runs off. Nux blinks, wondering why he didn’t know he could have been holding that part of her on the War Rig...maybe she’d have given him Mother’s Milk too.

 

“By the Stars! Nux, you’re awake!” she explains, so happy that he’s ready to declare his worship for her then and there, but her smile falls quickly and goes thin. It clamps his teeth together real quick.

 

“What are you doing? You’re - oh Nux….come here,” he lets her take him by the shoulders, shivering at her touch...or maybe because of the fever, he’s not sure anymore, but he knows he can’t concentrate on the bad sensations in his body when her hands are touching him, putting him flat on his back, stroking his sweaty forehead and untangling the sheet wrapped around his waist. He must have gone real soft for them to have him like this, hooked up and on his back. They’ve never made him lay down when getting a transfusion. He’s never been that far gone before - was always real good about letting them know when he needed a top up.

 

“No more moving alright, you’re going to crack your ribs if you do that anymore…” _When did he bust his cage?_ He’d been fine on the War Rig.

 

Nux touches his side where the pain is radiating and feels dirty fabric soaked in sweat, under it the raised, tugging sensation of stitches. It takes him awhile with the fever to remember why those neat stitches are there, but none of the rest makes sense. The crash. Flipping the War Rig. Witnessed - _shiny and chrome._ Once again he was denied, but this time he’s not crying about it.

 

“I followed…” it hurts to tell her, and maybe the words don’t come out as clean as he thinks. She only looks at him with worry, brows bunched up tight before running her fingers down his jaw. Cool and soft...chrome on his hot sticky skin. Nux wants her whole body to lay along his - skin and skin. He wants her to soak up his heat...maybe she needs it since she’s so cold. He’s got more than enough to give.

 

“It’s okay, you don’t have to try and talk. Maddie said your throat was going to be sore after the surgery,” she says, so gentle and strong - not like Nux, not like him. _Not now._ Her touch eases down his neck where his mates are...only her touch is wrong...flat. He goes to touch Larry and Barry but they’re gone, cut away, leaving another scar that’s ragged; a ruin of hot bubbles. 

 

“Don’t push on it too hard. It needs draining...Oh,” her voice cracks and he looks up at her, “...Nux. You’re alive...you’re really here.” A wet trail shines down her cheek, followed by another and another until they’re dripping off her chin and on his V8. Nux swallows, unable to stop the sting in his eyes.

 

_“Mum…”_

 

A Warpup is sat up on the bunk, watching them both. Nux doesn’t know this one, he’s real small, but thicker than most and he’s jumping on the spot, staring at Capable longingly.

 

“Hush now, just another moment,” she whispers to him, turning away from the pup to look back at him with a sad smile. “You need to get your rest in, Nux. I’ll be here, we all will.” - and then she leans down and puts her lips to his. _A kiss!_ Nux feels his chest constrict, but it’s not like when he’s too jacked he can’t breath - it’s like hot blood is pooling under his ribs, at the back of his throat and it’s good. His lips tingle, but he’s too weak all of a sudden to try and return the kiss. He curses himself for being so rusty...too rusty to give her a kiss in return. It’s the kisses that gave him the fuel to kick his way out the War Rig, he remembers now. The thought of giving her cheek another kiss kept him alive. He didn’t care about Valhalla anymore. He just wanted Capable.

 

She smiles, and it’s happy and wonderful, not sad anymore. 

 

“I’ll be right here,” she reassures him, and her soft palm on his arm, stroking down the tacky skin carefully is what allows him to finally close his eyes. Sleep comes, but it’s unwelcome. It is, though, made less unbearable with her hand on him. She’s there with him. If the fever gets too bad...she’ll be with him when he goes out soft. It’s not what he wants, but Nux thinks it can’t be any worse than how he’d die before meeting her.

 

 

 

 

 

Slit kicks and fights the Warboys that carry him like a rusted smeg into another room, _a small ditch to die in,_ he knows. It’s pure darkness until they flip a switch and a cluster of small bulbs blaze yellow along the walls. They put him on something soft and he spits at the one that takes his wrist, snapping a clasp of metal on it, chaining him to the wall of stone. 

 

“Traitors - the lot of you! Worthless, rusted smegs…not worth the blood in your bellies,” he heaves, feeling a wave of sickness come up with the anger. He thinks again about dying inside the flaming skeleton of the Razor Cola. The vehicle should have tipped on his skull, spilled his grey bits. Any number of things could have happened, should have, and now he’s stuck sweating and vomiting more than they can put back in him, planning how best to go out historic before the soft death grabs him. 

 

“You’re the dumbest smeg of ‘em all, Slit,” one of them says, throwing down his arm when he’s done chaining it up good and tight.

 

Again Slit spits, but nothing comes out, his mouth is too dry to even swallow properly.

 

“He’s got the fever,” she says - that one rust-colored piece of chrome, “don’t insult him. Now get out, both of you.”

 

When Slit opens his eyes next he’s alone with the Breeder, ignoring her as best he can while she sets bowls at the foot of the soft bunk he’s been imprisoned on. If he had the energy he’d kick them off, but he can barely wiggle his toes, let alone kick any more.

 

“Put me on a rig, give me a lance. I’ll die historic, you’ll see…” he growls, seeing his death clearly. Morsov would be turning in shame after Slit dies and lives again. Everyone else will be mediocre compared to him. _They’ll all see._

 

“You couldn’t stand if I put you on your feet,” she tells him, something annoyed in her tone that makes him twist his head away from her. If he doesn’t see her it’s almost like she’s not there. But the touch of something wet and cold on his chest makes him hiss and jerk with renewed vigor. 

 

“Calm down, it’s just water.”

 

Slit’s chest heaves and it feels good. He wants to hold onto the feeling. So little feels good right now, or has for what feels like months and years, but he hates this shiny chrome thing that’s been tending to him like a sickly Warpup so he resists the feeling out of spite.

 

It doesn’t stop her from doing it though. As she strokes the wet thing in lines down his chest, he starts shivering with the strength it takes him to ignore it. The blood they’ve been giving him every few days has been having effects on his body he doesn’t understand, but hates either way. The Breeder’s touch only makes it worse, so when she makes it down his stomach to clean him down there he can’t stop the broken sound that shoves itself up his throat. Slit hates her. _It’s her fault he’s like this…her fault he’s broken._

 

“I know you don’t like this part, but just…” she doesn’t finish, which doesn’t matter since Slit’s ignoring her as she unties the cloth around his hips, tugging it down before wetting his soft bits carefully...but they’re not soft anymore. He’s never soft when she does this and it makes him feel mediocre. _Soft death would be better than this._

 

He groans, shoves his teeth in his tongue and bites down, tasting blood so the stuff that she’s doing - the stuff that feels so good - doesn’t make him grunt and moan. By his side his half-arm shakes. Slit swallows a mouthful of blood by the time she ties the knot back at his hip and the feeling that felt so good falls into an ache that demands more. He wants to beg her to touch him again. 

 

Slit hates her so much.

 

“Alright, up we go,” he jerks away from her, resists the soft small hand that goes under the back of his head, lifting him up so his chin bumps his chest uselessly. The cup is pressed to his mouth but he presses his lips closed, unwilling to concede to her and her fucking water.

 

“You want to die soft?” she asks harshly, it’s not like her usual patient annoyance. It makes him look at her finally.

 

She’s so chrome it hurts. Her face is round and healthy, cheeks glowing in the light and he can’t stop looking at her lips that are so puffy and red he wants to bite them. _No,_ he thinks, _no dying soft._ All this pain and torment would have been pointless if he goes out medicore.

 

He glares at her when the side of her mouth tilts up, smirking, “Then drink this...don’t fight me and I’ll help you get back on your perch. You can die however you want then.”

 

He’ll go out with a whole army after him, guzzoline strapped to his chest and a dozen lances in his arms...no, just the one arm. Blood seeps into his mouth again and he swallows, opening his lips for her to pour the Aqua Cola down his throat. It’s better than lancing, this feeling of the Cola in his mouth, wetting his dry throat and bitten tongue. It stings but the cool liquid seems to heal everything in the moment he’s drinking it. He can’t even find the energy to hate her when she’s tipping the cup against his lower lip. The tang of metal from the rim leaves his lips covered in a sweet tang that dims the pain.

 

“See, you’re not completely unreasonable,” she tells him, setting the cup down. The trickle and squeeze of the rag ruins the good feeling from the water. The Breeder continues wiping down his body, cleaning the creases on his face, the scar and the back of his head. Slit couldn’t say when he closed his eyes, when he let his body go lax and his throat to open, but she’s finishing his feet when he groans so loudly it snaps him out of the spell. 

 

She’s peering at him with a thin brow arched, questioning. But he refuses to speak to her. She saw him cry that one night after they stitched up his arm - it was her punishment for seeing him that he refused to speak to her, and maybe she made him feel mediocre too. But fuck her and her reasons for tending to him like this.

 

“I brought a word burger with me today. It’s about…” he eyes her as she reaches down between his knees and lifts a red thing, turning it over, “...war. Figured you’ll like it.”

 

The Breeder does this every time. The needle slides in his arm easily, and she brings up a chair before coiling the tube over his head, sitting down near him before feeding the other needle in a bulging vein on the back of her hand. Blood wells up, dark and red and he sees her wince - not liking the look on her face.

 

She flicks the tube and props her arm up on the metal railing of the bunk. He can smell her sweet sweat and the ache between his legs pulses so hard he squirms weakly on the bunk, cursing her under his breath.

 

“You’re lucky I offered to do this you know. Otherwise you’d have that one you spat on doing this. I doubt he’d read to you,” she mutters, opening the word burger, flipping pages quietly.

 

Sure, she’s better than that smeg, but he still hates her...and he reminds himself of that when she starts reading to him, it’s all confusing and makes no sense _‘the enemy needs to think you’re far away when you’re near, close when you’re far?’. ‘War is about defeating your enemy without fighting them?’_

 

 _Pointless._ You catch your enemy where they’re weak and drive a thunder stick between the axle and the wheels or into an open window. It’s simple and only the fastest and most precise shots count.

 

“There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare…” she reads, flipping a page after licking her thumb.

 

Slit sees pink and shine, saliva paint her thumb and he swallows more blood and spit as the ache throbs. He wants to grab at himself and stroke, but even if he was weak enough to do such a mediocre thing he’s chained. A prisoner of this bunk and the blood that’s only making his hard bits harder and stiffer. The Breeder at least has the decency to not mention it, but he almost wishes she would. Ignoring that he’s broken and mediocre doesn’t mean he isn’t.

 

“What the point if you can’t do War?” he mutters, not thinking.

 

The Breeder stops, turns quickly and stares down at him with wide eyes that quickly narrow. Slit curses himself, turning his head away from her. He broke his rule - her punishment, and now she’s going to speak to him even more.

 

“War just destroys things…” she says, voice breaking oddly, “maybe the point is to prevent War. You can still fight at any rate.” 

 

He rolls his shoulder, feeling less weak as her blood fills his body, but he refuses to say anything else to her. Instead he looks off at the blank stone wall as she shifts loudly, flipping pages and whispering the words to herself quietly. Sometimes he finds himself straining to hear her, but mostly he just wants her to shut up. It takes too long to fill him up when she’s doing it - maybe she’s too weak and small, but she’s better than Guzz - the bastard that deserved more than being spit on. _Too weak to go to War, too mediocre…_

 

After awhile his hard bits go soft and he breathes a deeply in relief, closes his eyes and concentrates on the delicate sounds coming from the Breeder. It’s gentle, like her hands and the smell she emits. It’s just as heady as the fumes of the engines, sweeter and delicate. Chrome and shiny she is, gentle like a soft smeg but he likes it. Her voice drifts through his ears and he cracks his neck, feeling the pressure in his spine loosen, relaxing.

 

The needle is pulled from his arm before he realizes it - a little sting he feels now that his body doesn’t hurt so bad anymore.

 

“Cream and then you get to be alone,” she tells him, scooping something green and slimy, like infected pus out of a little bowl. It reeks but he holds back the jittery feeling of tossing up as she coats his burns in it. Once it’s on his skin it dries, almost like his war paint. 

 

“I’ll be back tonight with food, just yell if you feel like you’re dying soft, yeah?”

 

Slit sneers as she smirks, taking her things in her arms - the word burger, her bowls of water and cream - and leaves him alone. He should be grateful she’s gone, excited to be left alone to himself finally, but as the moments linger and the quiet buzzes in his ears...Slit realizes he misses her.


	5. Fire Walk With Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thanks to Zoadgo, redcandle17, twiggzzler, Liisiko and Apholeen for their heart warming comments. You all are so wonderful!

Knowing her sounded better than the way the others described seeing. When he knew her it was a sense - smell, taste and feel. Even from far away he could know where she was - know the tension in her muscles, the slide of fingers on wet flesh and the smell it made on the air. Sometimes he could feel her heart pounding on the tip of his tongue, mingling with the taste of her sweat. 

 

Coma knew what she was doing. It was something he did to himself to chase away the pains and boredom. 

 

He stepped carefully, only knowing when he went still where she was, if she was turned to him, if she was looking for him. It wasn’t too hard when the only sounds up here were her sounds - panting, shifting in the grass, swallowing thick and shaking.

 

The scent wet his tongue when he got close enough, settling near a large mass that felt cold and hard - the tree, or a tree since he knew there were many more. Careful of the sound of his loose clothing, he sat down against it. It’s flesh dug hard through the thin fabric at his back, itching an itch between his shoulder blades. A bite to his tongue kept him silent as he worked his back into the goodness. 

 

There, just a little ahead of him, was Dag - and the smell. Coma inhaled quiet but deep, taking in long lungfuls through his nose until he felt his head start to float up, like steam in his nostrils, cooking his brains; melting them. 

 

It was like _Her_ , but it wasn’t at the same time. It was Dag, and it was good like only music was - like only playing War had ever been. 

 

_“Ha…”_

 

Coma shifted as gentle as he could when the sound made his stomach flutter and clench. _Taking of herself,_ he wondered. _Finding peace - solace. Talking with the gatekeepers_. She was reaching that out of body state he knew. Envied even. She tasted so good on the air he felt spit gathering under his tongue, laced with her. When he swallowed it he pictured swallowing from her and it made bumps rise in an army on his arms and legs. Fingers plucked at air, needing the strings, but he played a tune in his head to appease them.

 

The Dag wouldn’t like him here.

 

Coma listened to her shiver and sigh, muscles go stiff and then...relax. No, she wouldn’t like him here as he listened to her. She was a woman, and woman liked their privacy - a thing he was violating, but he couldn’t see her. Perhaps she’d forgive him more easily knowing that. She didn’t have to know he knew her, tasted her, felt her heart on the air or filtered out the reek of herbs and plants until she was all he could smell. 

 

The Dag didn’t have to know those things.

 

The sound of her legs falling close - a loud slap of sweaty skin and a moan. Coma got to his feet, quiet still and found the soft, cool stone with his toes. This part was harder, finding his exit that had no heat or smell, no taste or movement for him to know. Just his feet skimming the ground, his fingers teasing the space around him so he didn’t trip or fall. The dip of the stairwell met his toes and he held his breath to keep his balance before stepping onto the first step.

 

It was simple from there, just a touch on the wall and a sense of endless falling if he should lose his footing.

 

His cock head brushed wetly in his onesie with each step, but there was no knowing of anyone close by, so it was enjoyed and savored. Every step down was pleasant and dangerous - teasing him until he reached the bottom, palmed the wall for an alcove large enough for him for flip a few buttons, sling his arm out a sleeve and eased it down his bare side, careful of the bandages, to fist around his cock that pulsed with blood and energy.

 

It did not take long, three solid, firm drags of his scratchy palm - calloused fingers biting into the soft skin - and he made his mess under itchy fabric, hidden away around wet, soggy clothes. But he had a long way yet to go. If he was to catch The Dag before she woke again he’d need to wash himself.

 

It wouldn’t do for her to see him first hand like this.

 

Slow going back, more slow than going to with the rush of finding his peace. It’d wear off soon, but before it did he grinned wide, enjoying it even though it would make his ribs ache once it wore off. _No brash movement_ the Hag told him, but he wasn’t one to obey a master, just the music and if she didn’t provide the tools to make his music then there were no reasons to sway to her command. 

 

He’d listen to The Dag maybe, if she ordered him. Coma doubted she’d do such a thing - the women must have been sick of demands, of orders and having to follow them. So was he, if he were honest. Even if his orders were to play War...not breed and smile about it. Owned was still owned and orders were still orders. To be free was…

 

...it was nothing like he knew it meant to The Dag or the Warboys even, but it was still one of the best feelings of his blind, half-life.

 

He knew one or two bodies on his way back. The smells and the noise directed him. The feel of the walls and the wet slick of the ground was helpful too. Once he reached the catacombs where the cold crept in like disease, be could walk without touch to his pit in the floor. Coma grinned wide, licked his teeth and lifted the grate before sliding down into his rabbit’s hole - a place of heat and moisture and a nest of sour blankets and pillows. Everything had it’s place in his hole, and he reached easily to pluck up his Axe from the metal stand. 

 

He wasted away an hour in his nest, naked with his legs crossed, plucking chords as his onesie hung, drying after scrubbing it with the moisture collected off the walls. His guitar was out of tune, and no twists or turns of the pegs seemed to fix it. One of them was lose, wiggling against the neck as he traced it’s inlay gently. Most of the Warboys that could fix it were buried in The Dag’s garden. A few still lingered maybe, but without eyes to see he’d have a hard time doing it himself and training an eyed Warboy wouldn’t be easy.

 

“Can’t teach sheep to be wolves...or wolves, sheep,” he tells his axe, thumbing the bend as he strums and hums, broken but enjoyable. 

 

In the dank surroundings of his pit, he finds himself missing the open air of The Dag’s gardens, so much that he gives his guitar a goodbye pick and climbs into his clothes despite the wetness still over the groin. Coma sniffs it, smells nothing too terrible and licks his teeth happily. She won’t be pleased, he knows, but he’ll need to introduce himself eventually. 

 

He’ll play her his music, click and sing and play something better than War, something no one's played since _She_ died. Coma will play it for her, for The Dag, and she’ll love him. She’ll hold him and maybe she’ll sing to him like _She_ did. Happiness would follow, same as he follows his path back to her, step by step; careful and quiet. He feels warmth now - dawn, and he knows she’s where he left her, breathing softly.

 

His fingers go hard around the single neck, frightful she’ll notice the rotten tune with the loose peg. He sits, crossing his legs aways from her...maybe too close for her breathing is loud and gentle. She smells soft, not strong like before and when the wind blows he hears no sounds of shuffled fabric, just hair on skin. This makes him grin, wondering how she curves - if she’s really as slim and tall as they say. 

 

When she wakes up he’s still wearing the grin, unable to help himself as his finger nails start to ache. The anticipation kills him once, twice...thrice over as her fresh skin stirs and crumples the grass, releasing the aroma of herbs and dirt.

 

She stops breathing, sees him he knows. Coma hopes he doesn’t look too much of a fright - thinks maybe he should have tied some cloth around his sockets for her. _She_ can’t cover him up anymore...

 

“You- you’re the Doof Warrior.”

 

She even sounds sweet, just as sweet as she smells. It’s a sound that nearly breaks his bottom lip he grins so wide, stretching the wet raw flesh until it stings. The Dag is better than his dreams.

 

“One and only - half extinct someone once said,” he tells her, chopped, giddy and lacerated. The Road in his throat still hasn’t healed, but he says the words well enough. A thick sound of her throat bobbing, swallowing makes him turn his ear, waiting.

 

“You survived then…”

 

He nods, inhaling, waiting, trying to know what she’s doing. He clicks his teeth and knows her face - sullen. It’s not a good sign after realizing someone like him lives, but Coma’s prepared he lets the blood drain into his numb fingers, feeling them tingle. She breathes deeply and he plays a steady riff that sings his praise, calling her name high with his fingers alone. In the vibrations he knows her body, her lips...her blinks.

 

“Wh- what are you...s-stop!”

 

His music screeches to nothing and he freezes, teeth in his lower lip. His tongue is washed in iron; blood by the time he registers the pain and she’s shifting in the grass. She stands, he knows and walks back a few steps before turning, “Just wait here, I...need something. Don’t move.”

 

Away, far enough away the wind from up high hides most of her, but he can hear the delicate rustle of fabric and his stomach flips in displeasure. She’s putting on her disguise for him, as though he can see her. Might be he can do better than see though. When he played he knew her and she was sweet in curves as she was in sound and scent. Now the clothing dampened his knowing and he frowned.

 

He did more than frown when he realized she wasn’t running towards, but running away from him.

 

-

-

-

-

-

 

By night Toast had read most of the word burgers a shy, barely-past-puphood Warboy had given her. Furiosa had piled her desk in the catacombs with about a dozen other ones, all of them good material she’d said. Her own arm, she disclosed, was created by the Organic Mechanic and the same Warboys that built the Doof Warrior’s axe and the Wagons systems. Half of what she read she forgot already, but the word burger was filled with rabbit ears and slips of paper she’d scribbled half-crazed notes on.

 

She was persistent though. Four more of the thick volumes were laid out on the floor, thickened further with more of her notes and word marks, already digested.

 

This little space had been empty, maybe belonging to a low ranking Imperator. What little was inside was just stale blankets and scrap. The rest the owner must have taken with him on the Road, never to return. That was fine by Toast, she’d hung up moth-eaten blankets on the walls, hiding the uneven stone in a wash of patterns and color and began filling the space with things of her own.

 

A low lantern sat on her desk, casting a disgusting sheen on the sketches and words, making them look soaked in urine. They might as well have been judging by how damp it was down here. It was any wonder the Warboys were always sick. The place had been filthy and chaotic, if not chaotically organized by their standards. Order was coming under Furiosa’s guiding hand. The damp was still an issue. Toast had suggested taking some gunpowder and blowing a few more holes in the walls - vent the place out, but Furiosa only looked at her in that way she had a habit of doing lately.

 

The look meant something like _‘Nice try’_ she knew. Anything to not have to walk around in the loose fabric that resembled her previous attire - anything to help them forget she was once a Breeder. Was it any wonder the boys went around shirtless day in and day out?

 

After awhile the words started to blur and the short sentence didn’t make sense after three tries so Toast slammed it shut, tossing it to the desk with a loud slap. She didn’t worry about the noise. Work never seemed to have a bedtime here. It was both a blessing and a curse. The lack of stillness helped keep the monsters at bay, but it also meant Toast had trouble sleeping sometimes. Tonight was one of those nights.

 

“Fine,” she said aloud. She’ll go visit him. _Just to make sure he was still breathing. Just something to do..._

 

The excuse was a stupid one. He’d been well past the point of dying soft a couple days ago. Maddie taught her the signs for a healing body. The pus-filled lesions on his burns were crusted over and red - the purple skin around the sewn flesh of his stump was fading to pink and the minor abrasions, cuts and bruises were doing fine…going from black and blue to yellow and brown...

 

Toast still wanted to see him. There hadn’t been a day yet since they brought him back that she hadn’t seen him.

 

Day by day, mornings and evening she took care of him. They’d matched her blood type to his the night after they put him back together and she’d yet to let someone else tend to him. It didn’t matter that he was insulting, difficult, angry...ungrateful...and a host of other negative things. When she was near him she thought of nothing else but how she could have easily been in his place. One more bleeding and Joe would have shredded her worse than Slit...and no one would have been allowed to care for her after that. When she was with Slit she didn’t feel pointless or even all that angry...even when he tried to get a rise out her she felt calm and collected. Secure in her existence almost. It was strange to say the least. 

 

The Warboy kept the monsters away too it seemed.

 

Outside her room the walls seemed to drip with moisture, especially at this time of night and it was cold, cold enough that she had to throw a large blanket over her shoulders before she could manage navigating through the corridors to the Organics.

 

The Warboy, Slit was still prone, exactly as she left him that night, sleeping, the bowl of food he’d refused to let her feed him empty. If he ate it or a passing Warboy, she couldn’t say...probably the later. Toast had never seen anyone so reluctant to eat in her whole life.

 

He was the only occupied bed out of three - a thing she enjoyed when she visited him, but not when she left. To be alone with one arm and brimming with hate didn’t heal anyone - not to mention they still had him chained after finding him stumbling around the Catacombs, searching for a driver to let him lance for. The boy wanted to die...no doubt about that.

 

Quietly she sat down in the rotten-backed chair beside him. Each breath that he took was ragged and nasally - pained. Toast leaned back, ignoring the lumpy feeling of the chair and watched him. She stared at the burns, covered in the thick mucky green cream - stared at the bruises up and down his ribs that snuck out from the compression gauze she’d put on him that morning. His stump was hidden against his side, but the tube Maddie threaded inside hung black above the bed, draining all the sick from it. 

 

The older scars on his face always got her attention, being so messy, unlike the obviously self inflicted ones on his arms...shoulder...though the ones on his stomach struck her as wounds that also could have been done by his hand. Her nose scrunched up at the thought. They were so deep, showing the thicker layer of abdominal muscle, dried and coated in a thick pink scar under the metal bracket.

 

_“Think you’re real shine…”_

 

She looked up, momentarily spooked. 

 

Slit was watching her hotly - as though all his hate, weakness and pain was trying to shove itself onto her, but it hadn’t worked before and it wasn’t working tonight. He brought her a solace he’d hate to know.

 

“Bet you think I’m gonna traitor for some soft Breeder and her soft hands...not gonna traitor like that filth - not for no one ‘specially no rust-colored Breeder…” he hissed and spat it slowly and weakly - sadly. It wasn’t the worst thing he’s said to her, but once she told him how much she hated being called that he used it every chance he got. He knew her name, she told him it often enough, but he got some sort of relief from his pain and torment by trying to inflict it on her.

 

She held steady, pulling her blanket further around her as his eyes traced what wasn’t covered, like knives on her belly, “Did you eat the food I brought you?”

 

Slit snorted, turning to face the ceiling, “Smelt like smeg-shit.”

 

“Soybeans,” Toast corrected him, studying the way his lips quivered, “full of protein, stuff you’ll need when you get back on your feet.” The idea of getting out the bed seemed to spark his interest. His hand worked against the chain like a knee-jerk reaction. She continued softly, “Otherwise your muscles will start atrophying.” 

 

He turned an eye to her, for once not hateful but questioning.

 

“It means your legs and arm are gonna get thin and pup-like if you don’t eat something. You sure as shit won’t be lancing then.”

 

For a second he looks like he might insult her again, but something shifts on his face - he looks away, then back at her with some clarity, “Do you have any more?” and she smirked. A victory was still a victory even if it was a small one. And having him ask for food was a bloody victory if nothing else was.

 

-

-

-

-

-

 

For the first time since the War Rig was ascended into the Citadel, Capable doesn’t have her Pups clinging to her. She’s alone with Nux, or as alone as they could be within the claustrophobic walls of the Organics, with a sleeping, sickly Warboy just beyond the thin screen. All this morning he’s been sitting up, back against a pillow she stole from Rictus’ old room, eating slices of soft peaches and mushy peas. He asked for lizard at first when she mentioned food, but he didn’t complain when she brought him this.

 

“It’s so sweet, my teeth feel like I got charges on ‘em.”

 

Capable chuckles, smiling wide as he licks a moist slice before shoving it in his mouth, skipping the chewing part in lieu of swallowing it whole. He can do that now. Now that his mates are gone Nux has been working his throat oddly, making noises until the bulge in his neck vibrates - slamming food back like a crow. It’s been funny up until he started choking on a fat grape last night, but he either doesn’t listen to her when she tells him to chew, or forgets in his excitement at being able to use the full functions of his throat again.

 

“You’re going choke again if you don’t chew, Nux. You don’t want to hurt your ribs again…” she tries not to speak to him like he’s a Pup to be taught. He’s a man - a Warboy, but he’s got a mind like one sometimes. It’s endearing - it’s one of the things she loves about him, but it’s going to make his already long healing process longer if he keeps being reckless...even if reckless for him now means eating fruit wrong.

 

“Yeah...slow and steady. Chew and swallow - I can do that,” he tells her, biting the new slice; juice dripping down his chin. Capable licks her lower lip. They’re alone…but for the one asleep. The Warboy wouldn’t see, wouldn’t know if she…

 

Slowly she stands up, taking the bowl from his lap to set on the bench by the bunk - her heart hammering in anticipation and excitement. Nux only looks at her curiously, chewing the peach and then swallowing it loudly. A ruddy red settles in his cheeks as she puts a knee on the bed, careful not to dip the thin bedding too much. She doesn’t want him to shift and hurt because of her. She just wants to kiss him again.

 

“Could I kiss you, please?” she asks, whispering and his face goes nearly red, nodding like his neck’s gone weak. He surprises her by putting his palm on her lower back, leaning into the pillow and bringing her close - slow, as though he’s giving her more than enough slack to change her mind, but it’s obvious he wants her kiss. It’s heartbreaking in the best of ways. 

 

She grasps the metal bed frame behind the pillow, leans in and brushes her lips along his lower lip, feeling the soft ridges of scarring; puffy and wet. He taste like the peach, a little sticky but sweet as she licks his lips open, moaning quietly. Capable feels his fingers in her back, firm but fragile as she leans in further, slanting her mouth for a deeper seal. Nux breathes hard through his nose and a great shiver runs from his stomach to his lips and his teeth start working on her lower lip with greater passion than she’d have thought - like he wasn’t secured to his sick bed...like he was healthy and lustful; needy for her. 

 

She can’t help but think she’s dreaming. That every day since they brought him back has just been one long feverish dream and she’ll wake up in a pup pile and he won’t be there. But it’s real and he tastes real - is warm and alive. Lips, teeth and tongue - sweet as fruit and slippery - it was wonderful. 

 

Nux groaned, whimpered and stroked her insides with an agile, eager tongue. More hot breath - a shiver, tension and then she pulls away, gasping. 

 

There was silence and then she watched him grin wide, watching her with big blues, “Again?”

 

Capable blushed, took a deep breath and smiled, “Yea...again.”

 

They kissed, heavy and slow….soft and sweet all morning. _Heedless,_ she thought, in a daze when the time came for her to take her Warpups back from a tired looking Cheedo. _Get better quick,_ she thought as she gave Nux a simple kiss to his forehead. Because the way The Dag spoke of the pleasures she found in the nights...Capable wanted that with Nux more than she wanted anything else before. 

 

-

-

-

-

-

 

Dag has spent the past three nights hidden under her robes, lying in the grass and waiting for him to come back. He’s blind, she knows this - had seen the blank sockets that first morning. Since then he’s shown up with a dirty looking strip of cloth tied around the empty holes in his face, hiding them as though maybe trying to spare those that look at him the discomfort. Dag doesn’t know and nor does she really care. All that bothers her really and truly is the way he seems to know where she is without eyes to see her.

 

If she holds her breath long enough, going completely still he seems to have trouble finding her, but if a tall wind blows he knows. It’s disconcerting.

 

Sometimes she thinks it’s like he’s better off without eyes. Maybe the world he knows is better than the one she sees. She thinks of this while lying in her grasses and herbs and dirt and watches as he appears from the stairs, sliding his bare feet along the stone until his toes touch grass. He’s got his guitar again...the ugly conglomeration of metal and Before junk.

 

The night before he got too close and she hissed at him, digging her fingers into her dirt like from prairie animal. He wasn’t simple, he didn’t come any closer but he did grin and it was an ugly sight, filled with uneven teeth that looked like chips of broken porcelain in the moonlight. He was an ugly man...or Warboy, whatever it was that he was - but he played music and The Dag realized she craved it on the second night when he came to her without his instrument.

 

Tonight she frowned, but greeted him, “Evening.” It seemed to be the most wonderful thing to him, when she spoke to him. Like a child...a true child, not one of those Warpups. Pure bliss was easy to read on him since it appeared more often than not.

 

“Dag, allow me,” he stroked the guitar slung over his shoulder, making a keening noise on the strings that was unpleasant and raw, “and I’ll bring you stars - no need to fly to them tonight.” 

 

A huge, open-mouthed grin was what she got when she made a simple sound of agreement. Tonight he sat down in the grass...closer than the night before maybe. Dag had a feeling he’d been sitting a half a meter closer to her every night. _By the end of the moon he’ll be nose to nose,_ she thought with a sneer. He smelt horrid too - like a man. Even with his distance and the herbs to cloud in the air it was overpowering at times. Still, his music was sweet...nothing like the War he played. The noise that she heard sometimes in the Vault and like that which followed her nervous, sputtering heart on the Road.

 

When he started working the strings with his fingers, talented and easy, she rested back into her plants and relaxed. The night before she’d stroked her thighs to the sounds he made, but didn’t venture any further. Something told her he’d know if she tried. Sometimes she could smell herself when she did it, a thick cloying essence like that of the plants...and she was never silent either. This man would know if she tried. And though that knowing would have kept her hands off herself the night before, it didn’t seem so terrible now for some reason. 

 

Three day and nights without the feeling had made her slick and sensitive already - and with his twanging tunes it only made her desire the completion more. He said he’d bring her the stars but all she felt was an ache that she needed to coax away.

 

 _Harmless,_ she thinks, turning to her side to slip her arm from one sleeve, exposing her body to the air. _He’s harmless..._ and makes the sweetest sounds as she pulls the sweetest feelings from herself.

 

As her fingers slide and slip she eyes him often, not sure why when she knows he won’t end up looking at her, but something about the sloppy smile on his face and the brief show of teeth when he bites down on his lower lip make her skin feel hot - it’s like he’s looking. Somehow he’s looking at her, she knows it and for some strange reason she doesn’t care. And when she reaches the stars - or maybe they fall on top of her - it’s better than it’s ever been before. It’s like water pounding down on her from above, hot and steaming and laced with gold and silver. Soaks into every inch of her and releases as a broken sob.

 

She’s shaking, trembling in pleasure when she notices the world has gone quiet…

 

It’s like he sees her somehow, she thinks again wildly. Dag decides she likes it, for whatever strange and taboo reason. 

 

“Keep playing,” she whispers and is met with a laugh that’s insane and infectious and the music starts again and it’s perfect, violent and deep. And she laughs too, stretching in the grass and welcoming the night and it’s sleeping powder that’s also music and the strange blind man that sees her but doesn’t.


	6. In Our Talons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, from the bottom of my tiny black heart, twiggzzler, redcandle17, TawniToxic, Liisiko and Apholeen for their wonderful comments. And thank you for those that left me kudos as well. It means so much to me.
> 
> Here is a nuxable drawing I did (NSFW) http://brimbrimbrimbrim.tumblr.com/post/130099009683/new-chapter-for-roads-to-valhalla-or-somewhere
> 
> Warning for some dubious things in the chapter.

The exact moment the rust-colored Breeder unlocked his brace from the wall he wanted to put his hands around her neck and squeeze until she went from rust to chrome - like the chrome at night. But that desire passed when her hand slipped away from his wrist. He wanted to take it back, shove it down on his soft bits until they went hard again.

 

There would be no more washes from her, she told him - a knowing turn on her mouth that reminded him how much he hated her. As if he wanted her gentle touch, as if she knew he liked it. Slit spat on that...

 

She could keep her odd, pleasant touches, as long as he was able to move on his own again. The Breeder could go off and croak for all he cared, as long as he could die historic like he was suppose to. Then there’d be Valhalla...or something like it - or nothing...she told him it was a lie, but what did she know?

 

“You ready?” she asked him, breath close to his neck as she leaned over to tighten the ‘fresh’ bandages on his not-arm. While she lay near on top of him, frowning, he sniffed her...inhaled and sunk his front teeth into his tongue when he felt the vibration of some mediocre sound rise in his throat. Toast, that was the Breeder’s name. Toast the Knowing. She responded better to Breeder, though - went all red in the face once or twice, but it hadn’t worked yet today. The smell coming off her was good…

 

Slit nodded, pushed himself up even though her short fingers gripped him around the back and chest as if she could lift him if he buckled. He wouldn’t even let her think she was being of any help. She wasn’t.

 

When she went to tug him forward he shifted back. When she grumbled, tugging him up again he just hissed and held still, mastering his face into terror-rize like he would with a smeg Warpup. 

 

“Keep it up, Slit,” she threatened and his soft bits stirred again.

 

“I’ll shove my foot into the back of your knee before you can even beg one of the drivers to let you lance. Don’t fuck with me, and...just get up,” she dug her thin nails in his chest as if the pain was anything like what she’d already put him through - it didn’t elicit the feeling she was hoping for either. Instead his soft bits lurched, stiffening - but that got annoying real fast, so he relented. Slit silently admitted with a sneer, that she did get what she wanted from him after all. 

 

It was even worse when he finally got to his feet and all the strength he’d had in his legs vanished, like he never had any to begin with - all the reassurance he had in his body was draining like a slow leak every day. This was just the final crack that shot him dry. 

 

His arm was gone, his soft bits betrayed him, the burns left him unable to stretch and reach like he once did and now his legs were shaking...useless. Mediocre. Slit felt his eyes sting as the Breeder tried to help him back on the bunk, his lone arm not enough to keep himself off the floor.

 

“Get your fanging hands off of me,” he seethed when her breath heated his face making all the blood reach into his cheeks. His hard hit went limp as he pushed himself back up on the bunk, quickly grasping at his not-arm until he could swear he felt those absent fingers twitching. Maybe if he concentrated on it hard enough it’d grow back. A stumpy arm would be better than no arm…

 

The Breeder, Toast, stood in front of him, shifting and watching with those puffy lips pressed tightly together. Pity - she was looking at him with pity.

 

“Quit your staring…” he seethed.

 

She didn’t, so he braced his palm on the bunk and lurched at her, biting and hissing as menacingly as he knew how. If it didn’t mean being shredded himself, he’d shred her good. All the mediocre things she made him feel - the reminders, the touches and being treated like a simpering Warpup. It didn’t help that she kept level-headed when he acted feral, as though she was sure he wouldn’t hurt her - wouldn’t scratch her up.

 

Instead of backing down she jabbed him in the shoulder, getting up so close she was all he could sense.

 

Slit blinked in red, as if the blood in his eyes burst again, flooding inside; coating everything. They stung too, his eyes - they felt hot and something like a tear caught in his scars. Her tiny hands touched his shoulders and something hot sparked inside his chest. It felt like battery acid melting his ribs, strangling his beating thing, making it ache and throb and burst.

 

He watched her nails skim down, pushing her palms flat on his sternum. The open expression on her face, the parted lips that looked like something he could sink his teeth into and savor...he couldn’t take it anymore. That tight, painful thing that hated and hurt and cursed and felt like dying most times snapped. 

 

Slit wasn’t sure what he was doing when he slid his arm around her, but it wasn’t what she must have thought he’d do when her eyes slid closed - all soft features and loose muscles. Maybe the shiny Breeder, all rust-colored and chrome, thought he was going to hold her like he was some mediocre, sentimental shit like Morsov. She wasn’t even a wheezing Nux that needed his heat, just so she could live on to die historic.

 

No, she thought he was gonna do something different and gentle, but he flung her back on the bunk as hard and quick as he could and shoved his chest flat down upon her. The Breeder gasped, sucked in a breath and scratched at his neck as he wrapped his fingers around her throat...or more like he thought he did…

 

He didn’t have that hand anymore. His good arm was pinned under her back, his fingers denting in her spine and that not-arm of his was useless, hovering just at her shoulder. 

 

“Get off me,” he could feel her voice on his chin, hear it stabbing it his ears - taste it. The moist heat of it clinging to her bared teeth. She looked furious and it was refreshing like the water she poured down his throat that first time.

 

“Make me,” he hissed and the way her face went red, and her tongue pushed out to wet her lips made his soft bit go hard again. It stiffened like a hot stone up against the side of her knee and without thinking he jabbed it up between her legs. 

 

Her whimper shot him up like a frayed wire to his gut.

 

Slit growled, surprised but exhilarated -  and did it again, squeezed his eyes shut as she struggled and groaned. He inhaled hard, jostling the flesh that felt so good and so different. Slit wanted to shredd her, but it wasn’t the usual shreddin’ he wanted to do to her.

 

“Get. Off...Now, Slit. Or it's going to hurt more than it already does.”

 

Nothing hurt. She was just a dumb Breeder, dumb and shiny and chrome and by V8 - he jerked his hips harder, pulling himself further down on her, grunting with the feeling that wasn’t pain but was just as strong and plenty more addictive.

 

He jammed himself up along her once more, but the spike it made in his stomach was seized by a hungry stab of agony, stemming from that missing thing he’d almost forgotten about. 

 

“I told you!” she yelled, but the pain in his not-arm barely let him register the words.

 

Her little, thin nails were clenched around the stub of his arm, near piercing the soft wraps and finding the prickly, bulbs of stitched flesh. Rotten, traumatizing pain - brighter than the goodness he got from between her legs and just as nauseating as the walk he took back to the pass from the Razor Cola all those weeks ago. 

 

Toast. That was her name. He chanted it while she twisted him so easily, shoved him back to the cold, hard stone of the floor and watched him in all his mediocre glory as he tossed up over his bare legs, tangled in the sheets that had become his life, much like the bunk and her constant fucking presence.

 

 The heat of his retching burned him, shamed him just as deeply as the pain in his arm stung.

 

“You- you do that again…” Toast spoke, not at all as calm as he believed her to be - so much stronger than him he thought, “...and you’ll wish you died on the Road.”

 

The thing was, Slit already wished he did.

 

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Furiosa watches as Maddie drains the pus from her wound - threading a thin needle up under the stitches at her waist. It’s careful, but it doesn’t need to be. She’s alive and more pain will not be the death of her. So she lies still, watching the interchange of bodies pass by the open corridor. They’re busier than they’ve been since the takeover. They’re preparing...but none of them is really ready.

 

The Imperator’s have resigned themselves to her word and demand. They’ve seen the need for leadership and found her worthy though there have been days where she can’t remember doing anything to gain their respect. It shouldn’t have been so easy for them. The unflinching loyalty - their worship of Joe - it didn’t make sense for them to accept the change in their world so easily. Not that all of them did, but still, there were too many eager to pledge away the old Joe for the new. 

 

Too many nights have passed where she remained awake, sweating with the fever of the dying infection, of her dry ribs and the aches all along her. She’s lied awake, waiting for the final blow to come when she’s vulnerable and weak. But it doesn’t ever come and as she closes her eyes now, feeling the inflamed tissue deflating and the pressure lessen, she does her best to be thankful for life. 

 

The Fool had been right, she breathes. This was her salvation and she’d have never found it on the Plains of Silence. They would have died, shriveled into husks by the sun and the salt. They wouldn’t have even had the decency to be eaten by the crows - just left within the salt to go white and then turn into more salt.

 

“How are they faring?” Furiosa asks after the needle is slid out as gently as it was put in. She won’t complain. A little kindness should never be refuted. And they have time for it now, in their own way.

 

“The ones you brought back?”

 

Furiosa nods, watching Maddie soak up the yellow slime and blood that flooded from between the stitches. 

 

“Just that smaller child that died in the night - you’re blonde one buried him this morning.”

 

Furiosa remembers. That one makes a dozen dead since they returned. It was no more and no less than the tolls before. Every day it seemed there’d be a new face to replace a missing one. The goal was to find a day when death wasn’t as natural as the sunrise. There was no more forced breeding, no more endless bellies for an endless interchange of Warboys. No breeding stock. No battle fodder.

 

“I heard from a smaller one, Capable, you’re red-haired girl was macking that Warboy you sent us - the first one.”

 

“The driver. Nux,” she clarified, holding her breath as Maddie slid a syringe into the bouncing blue veins in her arm. The clear fluid bubbled with pink just before it plunged inside. Antibiotics, Maddie told her. The Organics had a large supply of them, of so much and the ability to make more. That was her purpose, Maddie told her two days after Furiosa found her here - dried blood on her hands and her nose in a dusty word burger.

 

A book, a textbook, she said.

 

Those that were hurt had a better chance of getting better thanks to her. Furiosa knew she would go unappreciated, but it didn’t seem to bother her.

 

“They grew close on the War Rig,” she tells Maddie, who's nodding, but maybe not listening as she sets a warm, damp rag over her stitched stomach, “I saw them - they never left each others side until the last moment. I was told she was the final one to leave…”

 

“Love does stupid things.”

 

Furiosa couldn’t give an opinion. It’d been hard not to grow attached to the Wives, though - Widows now. They made enemies on the Fury Road, but friends as well; new and old. 

 

She lifted herself up with a clench of teeth and a tight breath as Maddie wrapped her tightly around the middle. Maddie gave the knife wound between her ribs a critical look before helping her up by the elbow. Furiosa felt her eyes on her, watching her buckle back the harness, lifting her mechanical limb back in place. She tensed her bicep, curled the metal clamps and let out a ragged breath, filled with raw pain and heat that spread from the knife wound, all the way to the back of her throat. 

 

Another run was preparing - this one to Gastown. The next would be to the Bullet Farm and the next...who knew. Salvage, maybe. The Doof Wagon and War Rig, the countless vehicles they couldn’t bring back along with the bodies and the living. It all needed to come back at some point. There was nothing that they could afford to waste out there - nothing they could risk the Buzzards and Rock Riders taking for their own. 

 

“What about Toast?” she asks, taking the glass of brown murky water Maddie hands her. It’s for the pain she’s told, but it does little…

 

“A natural. Don’t know why you’re giving her them books. This place has plenty of metal mechanics - not enough willing to learn the body and the mind.”

 

Furiosa tosses back the mixture with a grimace. “And Cheedo?” she questions once the bitter taste dissolves.

 

Maddie frowns, taking back the glass as soon as it’s emptied, “Tries. Not as easy for her as it is for the short one.”

 

They share a moment of silence before the itch comes back to her limbs and she shifts.

 

“I need to go,” she says and pushes off the bunk, makes sure the ends of her shirt are tucked into the belt at her hips. She’s refused to go without her mechanical limb, but without the corset it rubs close to her wounds - the main cause of the pus, Maddie tells her, but she can’t appear weak in a time like this. She needs to be ready for if the knife in the night comes. If the jump smothers her when she’s pacified with the idea of safety. The Fool got her when she was one armed...there wouldn’t be any chance to fend off a gang of them...not in this state...not with one arm…maybe not even with two.

 

 

“You ought to rest...the world can wait a few more days,” Maddie whispers, hopeful and delicate...only for her.

 

Furiosa only glances back enough to see the wrinkled face, dirty and cut with a tired smile. None of them can understand - so why explain? She leaves for the run that afternoon, still waiting for the knife.

 

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The sheer fabric that covers his sockets is soft like nothing else is and the smell that falls like a cloud of burnt guzz, down to his nostrils is what he smells in the nights when The Dag finds her peace. He inhales it now and shudders. Coma liked to imagine it’s something she intentionally left behind for him, for the morning she woke to him with it, she wryly told him ‘now your eyes are as black as my disguise.’ - a quip based on ho he promised her she needn’t worry about clothes when he couldn’t see what she wanted to hide.

 

The Dag was sharp, though - knew he knew her - maybe better than she saw him in some way. It did not stop her from doing as she pleased while he waited under the stars, played along with her sweet sounds; knowing her. 

 

Coma bounced hard in the bungee cords and rubber tubes - a prototype for a new Doof Wagon. Nothing as grandiose as the one he knew, but enough to rally the troops. The support was unstable, but that didn’t stop him from bouncing from one foot to the next, savoring the feeling even without his axe in his arms. With all the sounds of welding, sparks flooding and flying, screws and bangs he knew most of the chaos below. 

 

A batch of Warpups hung near him while his Doof brothers sat on guard; silent and nearly as sightless as him. 

 

Coma didn’t care for the serious tension they held. Instead, he stuck his tongue out, uncaring for the spill of saliva down his chin and shrilled happily, twirling back with effortless ease in his rubber cage. His ribs protested, of course, but they would hold. His bones were thick and the meat around them strong. It would take more than high play to ruin the healing his late nights with a creature like The Dag have done. Just her quite cries to the stars have done more for him that anything that Hag could do. The Dag could open his belly and he’d remain smiling.

 

The smell of her floods his nostrils again and he feels his cock stir; eager and unashamed.

 

He grips the cords now, tugs himself up before letting himself fall, bouncing hard until his head feels like it’s about to rupture. Snap, fill and explode! Commotion ahead obscures the delicious aroma and for a moment he stills, listening.

 

“We leave now! All those ready - move!” The Imperator calls - Furiosa in all her glory. There’s hurt somewhere in her words, but Coma disregards it - it makes no difference to him.

 

He grins and digs his feet into the metal grate below, knows enough that he stretches his mouth so wide his lips crack. Down below his Doof brothers shift in a clack of soft dreads, mixed with bones and chains. They smell of anticipation, but of something stale and putrid too - like wasted potential.

 

“And so the General sounds the alarm,” Coma calls down, hoarse and butchered.

 

They are unaffected by the horrible garble of his voice, but they listen. They move and shift as one, pulling the lever that flies him threw the air to the glass dome above the lift - it’s there his Axe is lifted up to him. Guzzer or another laying it in his hands where he holds it tenderly, strokes down the single neck and feels the unbridled urge to lick the strings but instead settles for his teeth in his lower lip.

 

Thin skin ruptures, pooling blood as the sighted hands around him plug him in - make him whole. The electric hum petrifies his cock into stone, so he laughs, pushes it into the cool metal and strums a vicious rapture to the crowd. It’s no War he plays either - but it’s enough to throw the throng of bodies into a frenzy that lets him know the chaos better than if he could see. His fingers shred so hard, enthusiastic more for the release of pent-up energy in his joints than anything else and when the strings go sticky with blood it only fuels the pleasure in his belly and the throb between his legs. Coma’s teeth sink in deeper, swallowing the iron that spills from his lip and slips his tongue down to swipe at the beads before they fall. 

 

Bodies load and engines churn. Guzzoline fumes float upwards, masking the smell of The Dag but sings heavy inside his skull - a duet of chords and mental beats. It makes his skin peel in pleasure. 

 

The sounds...so alive and raw and nothing like before. It’s better than it’s ever been and he keeps shredding long after the party has left, lost in the rhythm and the tight twists and turns low in his gut. The feeling crests after the amps starts smoking. An acrid odor of singed rubber and wires add to the mixture of The Dag, of guzzoline, and blood. Coma screams under the call of the chords and releases the flood inside as his hips slide up against his Axe - metal gone hot and alive.

 

When his fingers bounce away, slip and go numb, he’s left with a ringing in his ears that’s louder than the call and another wet stain in his onesie that won’t come out so easily.

 

 

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Nux hears the sounds of the party rolling out, but Capable has already pressed him back down into the bunk three times now. He’s not chained anymore but by the third time she looked upset, red staining her cheeks like she had blood up underneath her skin - real shallow-like. So he satisfies the urge by banging his bare feet together, careful only some of the time of the broken thing in his foot. It hurts a little, but the ache takes his mind off the echo of activity up above. Nux itches down to his fingers and toes. That desperation for the wheel hitting him hard.

 

He sits up again and finds the cold ground with his toes, suffers the shooting pain from his foot up into his knee and searches for the pants she’s hidden from him. He’ll find a wheel naked if he has to. There’s no more need for him to be stuck here - he’s as healthy as he’s ever been. In no more pain than he already knows how to tolerate, he told her, grinning and hoping she’d relent.

 

She didn’t. 

 

So Nux goes to his knees, looking under the bunk and any small dark space he can think of, hoping he can find them before the Doof Warrior stops his call.

 

He’s pulling the soft thing up off the bunk, one hand pressed firm on the sudden breathtaking pain in his cage when he hears a soft rumble from behind. 

 

Nux looks over his shoulder at the short sister, Toast, who’s staring at some spot on his forehead. They didn’t like him being without pants. That was something he found out the first time he got out of bed without permission. It was true mainly of the other sisters. They didn’t react well when his bits were exposed.

 

Nux looks at what he’s doing and smiles at himself “Don’t tell Capable,” he tells her. Should have added a please but it slips his mind as he watches the tiny Sister put a flat hand over her eyes.

 

“I didn’t come by to spy on you, just needed to grab some things...could you - do something about that?” she waves her other hand out in front of her, motioning between his legs maybe?

 

“Your thing is just hanging there!” she clarifies, looking uncomfortable. Nux doesn’t want to be the cause of any of that. She’s not like Capable - who looked at him the first time and smiled, even more red going into her cheeks like she was angry, but not. Toast didn’t want to see him, of that he could tell. 

 

Nux sits down on the bunk and immediately forgets why he got out of it in the first place. His foot throbs with his beating engine and the cage that encases everything is just as poorly off. Even his head feels funny despite all the oxygen he can swallow. The sound of the call is fading and he spares a little self-pity for not being able to respond to it. There’s no reason to die historic anymore, so why is he so eager to reach out to it. Capable said he needed to heal...and it wouldn’t happen if he pushed himself like he used to. Back then it was a simple choice of either dying soft or pressing on to go out witnessed and shiny and chrome. It didn’t matter anymore...but that had been easier to accept on the Fury Road. Here it was harder to ignore something he’d always done.

 

The Sister, Toast, shuffles off to his right, filling a little bowl with something thick and green and he catches her hiding a small black bottle in one of the pockets of her thick skirts. Nux arches a brow and asks without thinking, ‘What’s that for?”

 

Toast turns around, red in the cheeks but it’s darker than the stuff Capable creates. He’s caught her stealing, he realizes. It’s not a thing he thinks a Sister would do - only a Warboy thing.

 

“Nothing - just mixing the burn salve together…” she says,  eyeing him suspiciously. Nux presses his lips together ready to press for more when a tall Warpup barrels into the room, swinging on the bunk frame before laughing as Capable follows through the open door - a small sleepy Warpup on her hip and another with black eyes trailing behind.

 

“I was worried you’d be gone when I got back,” Capable teases, a large, pleased smile on her face. The corner of Nux’s mouth twitches. He spies Toast eyeing him with amusement, but she doesn’t say a word about the state she found him in so Nux nods before resting his itchy fingers in his lap.

 

Capable reaches her sister, speaking in a low voice that’s almost another language for all the good Nux has tried to decipher it. The tall Warpup near his side looks him up and down, worrying his lips and fingering the straps on his pants. When he talks Nux is ready for it - “Hook says you drove the War Rig into the earth...says that’s where Valhalla is and it’s nothing like they said. What was it like?”

 

Nux looks back at Capable and she’s watching him with soft blue eyes that are hungry and gentle all at once, “Valhalla is here…” Nux says without thinking and he watches Capable’s face pull up red again before she turns back to Toast, speaking in their own language again.

 

“Doesn’t make no sense…” the Warpup argues, kicking his foot back and then throwing it forward, unable to stand still, “...what do we pray for then?”

 

Nux thinks for only a moment - the answer already in his throat when he tell him “Hope,” but the Warpup only sneers at that, ignoring him until Capable sets the tiny one down on the edge of the bunk before slipping a cool hand over his warm forehead. 

 

“I thought maybe it was time you got out of this bed for awhile,” she smiles and he sits up so quickly the break in his cage skids like metal on stone, stopping him near dead with the ache. 

 

“...hey!” she gasps, “I need you to prove to me you can be careful, though. Otherwise, I’ll make sure you don’t move for another week. Understand me, Nux?” It’s a firm promise and if her way of keeping him in bed is anything like that night she laid up beside him, running soft nails up and down his arm, then it sounded less bad than she probably meant it to be. But he wanted to get up - to do something, anything so he nodded slowly.

 

“Good...there’s something I want to show you.”

 

Toast pauses at the foot of the bunk, rolls her eyes and mutters a ‘goodbye’ that’s full of stifled judgments and laughter. Nux can’t care, though, cause Cheedo comes in and takes the Warpups away. 

 

Eventually the room is empty save the two of them and just as soon as the sound of retreating footsteps ends she’s leaning over him, pressing her mouth to his in a gentle kiss that doesn’t stay that way for long.

 

The path her fingers etch down his neck, to his chest and along his hip make his soft bits tingle, but nothing happens but the growth of a little need he doesn’t fully understand. 

 

“I thought maybe...that-” her perfect teeth press into her lower lip when she releases his mouth. Her lower lip is shine and when she whispers, “-maybe I could give you a bath,” he feels like Larry and Barry are back, chewing at his windpipe and even further down. He’s not even sure what a bath even is, but she says it like she says all good things...like the kisses and the warmth of her body by his in the night and the little path her nails run down his body…

 

Somehow Nux knows this might be even better than all of those...which is nearly more terrifying than tipping over the War Rig.

 

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Toast remains calm despite the way he snaps at her, calls her Toasty like it’s worse than the things he’s called her before. She can’t bring herself to tell him she appreciates it a well of a lot more than Breeder. The other insults seem halfhearted as well, and his persona lost its aggressiveness the moment he vomited all over himself, sniffling like a tiny Warpup as she helped him up. 

 

Slit exposed that simple part of him he kept caked up in layers of hate and dispassion afterward, if not for just a few moments before she was done cleaning up the sick and making him drink enough water to not have to worry about him the rest of the night. Without knowing it, she was sure, he showed her what was really inside - just a broken, sad man who lost everything. It’s not like she didn’t already know that, nor was it the first time she saw it on him...but it thrust the fact home more than it had before.

 

It’s hard to be insulted by someone like that, she figures - someone so beaten.

 

Instead she feels pity for him, which if she’s honest she felt more of than any fear from him even on that first hot day at the pass. Despite it all a part of her respects him, understands him maybe, and relates as he leans back against the stone wall, pulling in hard breathes as he fights to stay upright without her hands all over him. He had looked and felt stronger when he had her pinned to the bunk a few nights ago…where’d all that energy go?

 

The memory is itchy like a bug is crawling up under her skin, worming all around her body where she remembers his touch. She’d thought, against her better judgment, that he would hug her. That maybe he just wanted to be close to someone - that all he needed was a gentle touch and something to cry against. But looking back on it now it was silly and she’d been a bit naive to think a feral thing like him would do something so gentle. If he even knew what a hug was she’d be surprised...though he also didn’t seem to know what he was doing with his cock either. It was like he’d discovered something new. Which was even more uncertain and terrifying than if he knew what he was doing.

 

Slit grunted loudly, breaking her meandering thoughts.

 

Toast watched him from a couple meters away as he opened his palm out against the wall, swallowing a short, quick breath as his knees started to bang together.

 

No one could tell him he couldn’t do something without him doing his best to do exactly that. So she tells him with a frown “You can’t expect to make it all the way there today.”

 

Slit’s eyes shift up from the floor to her face. Toast pinches her tongue between her teeth to keep the smile from her lips, waiting for the rebuke. He only sneers at her over his shoulder, sliding his intact arm along the wall, shuffling another half a meter or so towards the door. He won’t make it, Toast knows and maybe he knows it too, but it doesn’t stop him from trying and that’s really the reason she came back after that night shoved down on his bunk. When Capable tried to urge her to change shifts with Maddie, maybe tend to another Warboy for awhile, Toast only offered her sister a shrug.

 

Capable wouldn’t understand it even if she told her, besides, Toast decided it didn’t make much sense to her either. Logically she should be horrified by his actions, scared to the point of avoiding him at all costs, but the next morning she found herself walking to his room - the previous night almost forgotten.

 

This was as much about Toast as it was Slit. Something about being by him made her somber - made the panic abate. Maybe the Warboy didn’t realize it, but she wasn’t just here for him...

 

“You can fang off to wherever it is Toasty’s like you come from! I’ve got it from here,” he tells her, licking his lower lip and taking another step that’s as unsteady and painful looking as someone trying to digest poison with a smile.

 

It’s amusing.

 

Toast has found that enjoying his moments to misguided momentum help her cope as well. As long as he doesn’t hurt himself...when that happens she reminds herself the amusement she feels, if any, doesn’t last long.

 

Watching him now is one of those times she wishes she could laugh at him without any repercussions. It’s only made worse with his one arm - his balance is off and it shows as he suddenly misjudges his reach and slides down the wall, knees buckling and hitting the floor with a final slap of bone on stone. Toast holds stills, watches his shoulders shake from across the room and waits until he goes still before approaching him. It wouldn’t do for her to see him crying again.

 

“I’m going to help you up,” she whispers, sees his head jerk, nodding, but aside from that he doesn’t acknowledge her.

 

He’s covered in a cold sweat when she wraps her hands under his armpits, lifting with as much strength as she can and praying he has the rest of the muscle to pick himself up. It’s clumsy and awkward and Toast has to ignore the feeling of uselessness as he straightens up, shaking her hands away as soon as the wall supports his back.

 

The brief contact of his skin against hers makes that insect wake up, clicking beneath the surface like a raging feral. Some of the green cream for his burns has smeared onto her too, filling her nasal cavity with the reek of it.

 

Let him fall again, a part of her hopes, but when he grunts, about to go down for a second time she pushes herself up under her half-arm, holding him hard around the middle. Her own knees shake, but he’s not too weak to make it impossible for her to bring him back around even if she has to breath after each step, as much a necessity to keep her body steady under his weight just as much as to keep her mind from wandering again - from snapping maybe.

 

“Just put me on a perch and let me die,” he spits, pushes her hands away as soon as his arse hits the bunk. She lets go immediately, takes a few steps away. He needs space and she doesn’t want to resort to cutting off his balls if he does that thing to her again. If it happens she’ll be the one to initiate it...and now she starts thinking about it again…

 

He swipes at his face, shakes off the droplets of sticky sweat and tries to peel off the cream that’s gone solid like a second peeling skin now that his pores have started leaking.

 

Toast kicks the bunks frame, keeps a steady stare when he just glares at her - all death and destruction and ghastly burns.

 

“No picking,” she tells him and before he can throw another insult at her she adds, “and no dying yet. You’ll need a new arm if you’re gonna go out proper. Don’t you?”

 

“I’m not a fanging lizard. My arm isn’t going to grow back,” he hisses it like she’s soft in the head, but she’s more worried about having let slip what she’s been working on. Either she lets him think she’s dumb or she tells him. It easy to decide when he’s looking at her like this, though. 

 

“I didn’t mean it that way. Furiosa has one arm...and she’s the best we have,” he scoffs at that, no doubt thinking he’s the best but he’s listening...pretending to find more interest in the hanging gunk on his neck when she takes a short step closer, swatting him hand away, “You could have one too. A new arm…”

 

The reaction she gets is a weak shrug and then he’s back to picking at the green film. Warboys don’t do well with hope, she knows now and reminds herself as she puts her fingers to his wrist, wishing him still. 

 

Slit keeps on picking, baring his teeth when her palm wraps tightly around his arm - it’s a defining moment, one where she stops breathing as his fingers rest and his eyes roll down up to her, assessing something that he eventually finds worthy, because he eventually asks her, “A new one?” he says to himself more than asks.

 

She sees his eyes shift between them, go half closed and then widen - as if he finally put it all together. “What do you need me to do?” he asks for true this time and something like a grimace that might also be a grin splits his mouth.

 

It’s another victory, but this one isn’t so small...

 


	7. Mouth For War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to redcandle17, TawniToxic, chromeshaft, Duarte89, twiggzzler, hey_am, Liisiko and RubyQuinn for their wonderful, amazing, and helpful comments. And thank you for those that left me kudos as well. It means so much to me.
> 
> Warning for some more possible dubious things in the chapter.

The Dag waits while the stars grow bright, and the moon hangs low - the heaviness of them all casting a blue glow on the green things. It seems to effortlessly make her bare skin look transparent as well.

 

_Turns the world upside down..._

 

Biting at her lip, she traces her nail down the thick vein in her arm, pretending to feel the rush of blood within her body, but there is nothing but the gentle quiet of the night. Even the crickets seem muffled in the cold night breeze. He is not here, her blind musician, and no amount of combing the fields, naked as ever, makes him appear.

 

There had not been a single night that he does not join her since the first, and though her fingers itch, and her inner garden aches she waits for him, ignoring the desire and the need. _It won’t be as powerful without him,_ she reminds herself - it won’t feel as liberating without his presence and his music, song, and smell. It will be weak and unfulfilling and The Dag can’t go back to those releases now that she’s tasted the kind he brings.

 

The night before she had grasped the stars while studying him, pretending he was joined with her as his fingers slipped and pressed along his strings, grinning in a messy, primal way as though he saw her clearer than she saw him.

 

The Dag had looked forward to a life with no one else's touch but her own. Especially no man’s caress, but not for the first time does she want him here, to push him on his back in the grass, tell him to keep on playing as she rides him at her pace; her own desire the only thing driving her. She thinks he would not mind it, even if she doesn’t do it for a love of him...there should be no shame in enjoying the pleasure and nothing more, because the pleasure itself is a wonder enough.

 

Coma does not come, though.

 

The Dag slips in and out of dreams, propping herself up from time to time to search for him through sleep addled eyes, but he’s never there. Before she knows it the sleep infects her again and then morning comes in all its blurry oranges, muted pinks and soft yellows. 

 

“Smeg…” she curses, unsure in all honesty whom she’s calling it.

 

She feels foolish for him, but he’s still the fool who didn’t show and her body sings with the release she denied herself in waiting. The unreleased flood in her belly turns her lips down, makes her mood as foul as it is desperate. _It’s his fault;_ she thinks, rolling up within the herbs and the dirt and still finding his worn-down patch empty of him. 

 

 _The Doof Warrior will pay the price,_ she promises. 

 

The morning is cold and crisp, and the water from the dirt is still wet without the bright sun to burn it off, so she rises with the earth staining her skin, making it soft and cool. She covers herself, but only because she’s resolved herself to sniff out the Warboy, who’s left her without the feeling of stars in her belly. _He owes her;_ she reminds herself, and again when she throws on more layers than usual, making sure to lay the darkness over her hair - to hide as best she can from the others. 

 

She has no patience for Warboys, barely enough for those Green Thumbs she teaches to mend the earth, especially none for the Black Thumbs and Lancers she’ll find on her way to Coma...but she’ll need to resolve herself to do so.

 

With a heavy breath, in and out, she flies - she needs to find him before the Green Thumbs arrive, before the sun ushers in the heat of the day because she’ll have no time to tend to herself then…

 

The Dag smirks at her disguise - all covered in long blacks and blues. It allows her to slip along the walls, where it’s most dark and remain unseen. Half-way down the smell hits her, and she pauses, tasting the reek of musk and guzzoline, of sweat and human filth.

 

It’s nothing like her sweet herbs and rich dirt and for a moment she thinks it might suffocate her. The smell only grows stronger, and it’s so cloying that she thinks she hallucinates her sister, standing with a small group of Warboys, scowling. 

 

Toast waves them away, and The Dag watches from afar as they obey her, rolling their wet looking shoulders in frustration, but leaving her be nonetheless.

 

It is surprising to witness, but there was always something about her shortest-of-sisters that commanded an air of authority despite her size. 

 

“Toast the Knowing,” she whispers against the wall, stuffed in a small little alcove, shaking her wrists free of the dressings to wave her over as her dark head turns at the noise. Toast smiles, but it’s forced and the corners of her lips twitch as if the action goes against every feeling in her bones. The Dag sees the exhaustion everywhere else on her but does not mention it as she rests a hand on her sister’s shoulder.

 

“You shoo away those Warboys like their pups,” she tells her, smirking.

 

“Hmph, they only wish they were as imposing as the Warboy I deal with daily...and he’s still bedridden. No,” she chuckles, “they got nothing on Slit,” Toast admits, smirking to herself - this time the expression is genuine.

 

“I could take you back to the gardens with me, no one would think less,” Dag offers, petting the Warboy-like dressings she has on around her shoulders. She looks more a Warboy than a sister now, with the smudges on her cheeks, the heavy pants, tight shirt and short hair. _It ethereal_ , Dag thinks, and Toast paints the picture even brighter when she grins wide at her offer.

 

“And leave all this behind?” Toast gestures to the Organics - a place she barely recognizes now - and laughs, something bitter and genuinely amused, “No, I’ve got my own roots growing…”

 

The Dag nods, knows it’s best not to push her, knows it never was, “Do you know where they keep the Doof Warrior, he’s….stolen something from me.” _It’s true,_ Dag thinks, but Toast doesn’t need to know what.

 

“They don’t keep them anywhere anymore,” Toast mutters, shaking off The Dag’s gentle hand with a huff, “But I think he’s one of those moles...so check down there.” 

 

Toast points a thumb to the darkened stairwell behind her. A long line of black paint marks the opening, slashed with symbols she doesn’t understand - had no need to until now.

 

Toast takes her by the shoulder, careful but firm, “I won’t ask what he stole, but I doubt you’ll get it back - they say he pockets whatever feels good. Sounds like a strange smeg, but he’s harmless.”

 

Dag wavers, wraps the blacks around her tighter, ignoring a fresh wave of cold rot from down below. No one knows Coma’s been her nightly visitor this past moon turn, and for that The Dag is thankful.

 

The same group of Warboys she caught pestering Toast appear around a corner as a single herd, watching her carefully as though if they squint they could see through her long thin wrappings.

 

Toast mumbles by her shoulder, “Trust me, they won’t bother you. It’s wrong, but they treat us like they did Joe...except for the one I got of course…”

 

Dag wants to ask - to know more about the Warboy she’s taken on. She’s heard filtered rumors from Cheedo through Capable, but nothing else. The one Toast cares for sounds horrid, but it’s not Dag’s place to judge. They belong to no one but themselves now, and Toast is free to do as she likes, as is Dag. So she kisses her sister's cheek softly, smiles and descends the stairwell that floods her nose with smells she barely tolerates and a darkness that laps at her eyes and clogs her mind.

 

 _It would have done no good to confess her true intentions,_ she thinks while the anticipation builds low and weighty.

 

 _“Watch your step!”_ her sister shouts, good humor in her voice but Dag waves her off as she makes her way down.

 

It’s dark and smelly, but the more she breathes it in, the less she hates it. Once down the well, even the darkness doesn’t seem so black, and it’s just her luck that she spies the Warboy she’s looking for, all curled up in a mass of cables, partially suspended from a windowed cut in the wall - his instrument wrapped within his legs and arms, slowly leaking drops of guzzoline at it’s tip.

 

Dag thinks it’s best to leave while she still has the mind for it, but he snores, kicks out his untied shoes and even from down below she can make out the outline of his soft genitals from underneath the thin red fabric, and her mind is set.

 

_He will be hers..._

 

She’ll have the Warboy as long as he doesn’t struggle too much, though the idea of him kicking while she joins with him, makes her adrenaline race in her veins. She thinks she can hear her blood rushing now, but it could be her imagination still.

 

There are only a few Warboys off to the right, and they all look tired - one of them lounging on the hood of a half-torn vehicle while the rest clean grease off a batch of filthy tools. They don’t even bother looking at her, so she clicks her tongue upwards.

 

Coma does not budge, only continues to snore.

 

Dag grimaces, eyes the ground and finds a little rock, smaller than her thumb. She picks it up, rolls it in her palm and grins before tossing it up at him. It pings off his guitar lightly. He’s slow to react, lips going back as if he’s sucking in air through his mangled teeth before he strums violent-like on his strings, turning his head around, sniffing. _He’s searching for her,_ she realizes.

 

“Ahh…” he coos, “She’s in the lion’s den now?” he asks, thick with sleep, but no less otherworldly sounding.

 

“Get down here,” she calls, eyeing the Warboys off to the side as they look over at her, then up to The Doof Warrior before deeming the exchange less attractive than their work. She’s pleased they don’t seem to care because she wants to extend all her attention on the Doof Warrior. She watches him as he pulls his limbs around the strangling cords, detaching himself as quickly as he can without eyes.

 

“I missed the night,” he croaks, regretful. He clicks his tongue to his cheek as he finds the ledge, grips it and slips down with his shoes a few feet off the ground.

 

“Bewitched by the music,” he admits. 

 

She watches him land on his feet, palming the wall to keep himself steady before turning towards her, clicking low and sniffing before standing still in front of her. It’s one of the first time she’s been near him on both their feet. Normally she’s already lying within her seedlings by the time he shows himself, and he always seems so tall when she’s on her back. Not that he’s not of a reasonable height, but no more so than she…

 

“Angry with me, I can feel it. Don’t be lax with your punishment.” He smiles all the while - like a mischievous pup. “I can suffer your wrought and smile through it all,” he tells her, raggedly giddy.

 

He has no idea what he agrees to. Maybe thinks he’s being smart. She just laughs, then smirks darkly and takes his offer greedily. Her lack of response must worry him, at least a little because his toothy grin closes and those eyeless brows wrinkle in question. 

 

“You can take me to your bunk then, I’ll punish you there,” she tells him, chin held high as he frowns.

 

Evidently he had not expected her to agree with him, or to offer said punishment. For a second Dag thinks to explain it to him - that maybe he too has bad memories of punishment, but his growing grin is raw but wholesome, and he nods.

 

“You see the speakers? Black, corrugated boxes...tentacles surrounding?” he asks, cracking his neck loudly with a flat palm.

 

“I do,” she does, and there’s an open hatch by the broken things that spill cables - one sparking in a fit of yellow and red in the back.

 

“Darker than a night down there...you’ll be just as eyeless.”

 

The Dag doesn’t like that, but she decides if he can navigate the world without sight, then so can she. _The Doof Warrior won’t harm her_ , she knows and reminds herself when she leads him by her footsteps alone to the open black hole in the ground. There is the start of a ladder, slippery looking and the smell coming up from it is musky...similar to her own smell when she reaches the stars, but it’s thicker and not as familiar. It should appall her, but it does the opposite.

 

“Before times say women go first, but I’ll go,” he says, something nervous in his tone as he clicks and taps his shoes around the hole, finding the ladder too easily, “wouldn’t want your skull to spill - too many spells inside to lose.” Her shoulder brushes his own, and it steals her breath, makes her lurch almost. But it’s in anticipation, and she can barely wait for him to call up to her from below so she can step down the ladder and join him in the dark, dank trench he calls home.

 

 

 

-

-

-

-

-

 

Toast palms the little bottle in her side pocket where she keeps the soft gauze and clips.

 

She’s pilfered another belt from a pile of excess clothing the night before, as she’s taken to collecting things in her many pockets like the other Warboys do.

 

 _Maybe it’s the pants themselves,_ she thinks. They make you want to keep everything on you at all times. 

 

She’s got more than she needs even now and as such was worried about the garment falling under the weight. The belt is tight but oddly comfortable, strapped high on her waist over her hips so as not to sink too low. Everything she needs is in her pants, more or less and the little bottle is perhaps her most treasured item - a small thing that occupies her mind more often than not since she stole it. 

 

She fingers its cap as Slit grunts, shoving dried lizards in his cheeks and chewing noisily - bones crunching. The fat, fuzzy peach between his legs has gone ignored for the soybeans and crispy lizards she brought him. Toast finds that if she drops a spoon of salt in the beans he eats those first, obviously enjoying the taste, though she licked the bowl once before and gagged at how much it bit her tongue. How he likes it she’ll never know, but he needs the protein and the nutrients and the soybeans are plentiful and nutritious. It also gets him to guzzle down the water she brings him as well, so she’s kept doing it.

 

Toast goes over her plan as he eats, gesturing to the peach when he swallows down the last bite of reptile.

 

Slit glares, but takes a big juicy bite of it regardless, eyes hot on her like it’s her he’s biting and not the fruit. He can kill her with his gaze all he wants, as long as he does as he needs to Toast doesn’t really mind...and he’s been more open to following her demands after the bunk incident, so she’s been more open to giving them.

 

“Good boy,” she jabs, smirking and watches him sneer and lick the juice off his chin lewdly in response. Her nail skims the bottle again, and her insides pull at the image that takes hold of her mind.

 

 _Wait for the right moment,_ she reminds herself. _Timing is essential_ …and the wrong moment could ruin everything. 

 

Slit finishes the peach quickly, either because he likes it or just wants to get it down his throat all the quicker. His teeth snap on the pit before he realizes it’s not edible and hisses, throwing it wetly against the wall with a snap in retaliation for the pain he probably feels. It makes her laugh despite the damning glare he throws her way.

 

“You ready to wipe that grime off yourself?” she asks, grabbing the cold bowl of water and a damp rag off the table.

 

Behind her, she hears him curse hotly and rip the sheet off himself. Toast knows he’ll be bare - exposed and angry - when she turns around. He’s refused to clean himself since she told him he was strong enough to do it himself, and the comment about his stench last night has finally made him relent to doing it.

 

 _Bring him sand,_ he told her. _No reason to waste the water,_ he said, but she only scoffed at that and brought the water this morning despite his demands.

 

When she turns around, he’s got his legs thrown over the bunk, picking at the stitches on his healing stub absently. He’s soft between his legs, she notes. Toast sets the bowl down on the bed, lays the rag beside it and gives his shoulder a little poke.

 

Slit growls and jerks away from her touch, but he grabs at the rag and tosses it in the bowl despite his words, “Toasty, waster of water - that’s what they should call you. Water waster…”

 

Toast shrugs, remains where she is as he wrings out the water with a tight fist and begins dragging it down his chest with hard, efficient strokes that leave irritated pink skin behind. It’s obvious her presence while he does this effects him. She turns her eyes down between his legs and finds him half hard, but he’s making a point to not look up at her, just continues wringing out the rag and washes himself off. 

 

_Obviously he’s uncomfortable...but he’s also physically aroused too…_

 

“Cold?” she asks, soft and careful to make sure her voice expresses what she intends. 

 

Slit pauses but doesn’t look up at her. He notes her tone; she knows, but he seems keen on ignoring her as he wipes under his arm, lifting his stub awkwardly. Toast steps closer and touches the back of his neck gently, where the thick skin of healing burns is glassy. 

 

“What are you doing?” he demands, beaten.

 

“You missed a spot,” she whispers, thumbing the tender edge around the lump behind his ear softly.

 

Slit’s eyes finally catch hers and with a smirk she snaps her own down to his groin where he is fully hard and angry looking. She looks back up and for a second he looked frightened, but it’s quickly covered by a rough sneer and a snort, “Why don’t you do it for me, Toasty, since you care so fangin’ much.”

 

Toast bites her tongue, slips her hand in her pocket and pulls out her little black bottle, shaking it once he looks his eyes finally dart to it. Slit grumbles and arches a brow, “Can’t poison me if I don’t wanna swallow…”

 

“Nothing like that,” she tells him while removing the bowl and the rag. He only kicks halfheartedly when she helps him pull his legs back up on the bunk - it’s made easier thanks to his confusion and obvious curiosity. His eyes, one still busted and red and the other bright and wide, keep looking from her to the bottle at the base of the bed wearily.

 

“Stay where you are…” she warns, waiting until he realizes she needs confirmation and nods reluctantly, eyes hot on the bottle still. _Maybe he’s figured it out;_ she thinks, but then he swallows and asks, “It gonna hurt?”

 

Toast frowns, shakes her head and kneels up on the bunk. 

 

Slit jerks, inhales hard and looks to the closed door as if he wants to yell for help, but the idea doesn’t sit well with him it seems, so he keeps his mouth shut. He’s been wary like this more recently as if he’s been waiting for her to take her revenge for the bunk incident. He must think this is what this is...and _maybe it is,_ she thinks, but it’s not going to hurt, and it’s something she’s been wanting to do for longer than that.

 

She grasps the bottle once her knees are braced beside his thighs - the oil that pours out of it warms her hands and it feels so pleasant she’s almost jealous of him and what she’s about to do. He’s got no clue, still staring at the door and her, biting at the inside of his stapled cheek nervously.

 

“Touch me and I’ll stop and,” she inhales, “you tell me if you don’t like this, alright?”

 

“What is _this?_ ” he demands, chest shaking as he starts to pant raggedly. His cock is still hard, maybe even harder, but he looks frightened too. Looks like he might start to panic any second.

 

Toast doesn’t answer him, just makes sure her hands are drenched in the oil before reaching down between her legs where she grasps him firmly and...strokes. 

 

-

-

-

-

-

 

The water is like nothing he’s ever felt before - it’s hot like the hood of a car under the bleached sun and the wet soaked into his bones, making all the aches throb is something other than pain. It’s like Capable’s kisses, but everywhere and he can’t stop moaning as she cups some of it’s shine, drenching the top of his head, flowing down his eyes and open mouth. _It’s glory and Valhalla and kisses and better than death._ So much that he feels like he’s gone out soft.

 

 _“Is it too hot on your leg?”_ she asks, lying behind him. 

 

“It’s uber chrome,” he breathes, sighing as she runs her thin nails against his scalp where the prickly hair is starting to grow in. He hates it but hates it less when she plays with it like this. Maybe she doesn’t find it as mediocre as he does, but it itches most times and he wants it gone as soon as he can hold a blade without shaking. But he can’t think about it right now while she’s touching him.

 

“The Vuvalini say it’ll help with the pain. The heat should loosen the tension in your muscles and besides, sometimes it’s just nice to relax.”

 

Nux agrees, nods as his eyes fall close. She put something smelly in the water too, and it’s making him drowsy. He doesn’t want to sleep - doesn’t want to stop feeling this way ever, even if he never sleeps again.

 

“Maddie told me you’re doing better, healing faster than she thought. Maybe you’re not as much a half-life as you thought,” she tells him, lips brushing his stubbly cheek. Nux wheezes despite his mates being long gone. He’s unable to help himself and with her touch, feels a pressure in his groin develop as she kisses down his neck, careful of the healing scars Larry and Barry left behind.

 

Under the water, he palms his soft bits and marvels at the enjoyable feeling it brings. They’re tingle too, but Capable whispers to him and he forgets about the feeling.

 

“You’re going to be back driving again soon…” she sighs and her arms slide around his shoulders, laying flat palms on his V8 and her chin on his shoulder, “you won’t need me as much then.”

 

“Always need you,” he mumbles, out of his element like so many times when she’s close, but it feels better than most things ever have so he doesn’t mind the new stuff as much. 

 

Capable’s nose brushes his jaw, warm breath mixing with the steam and her gentle fingers slip against his V8 scars, dipping further down into the water until he nearly feels the tips of them on the dimple in his stomach, “I need you too, Nux. I want you healthy...but something in me wants to take care of you too, so you’ll always need me like you do now.” 

 

She kisses his neck and he moans. Capable sighs, “I know it’s wrong, but it’s been nice having you at my whim like this...”

 

Nux doesn’t understand why it has to change. Why she can’t keep doing this with him until he dies, but her hand pulls free from the water, brushes his jaw and steers his mouth against hers before he can reply. She’s told him how good he’s gotten at this, so when he opens his mouth to slip his tongue on her own, he’s not worried when she gasps, surprised. The taste of her is sweeter than the fruit she brings him but more important than that is that she’s her. She’s alive, and he’s alive and her lips twist and pluck at his own, heedless of the breath they both need.

 

“Nux,” she moans against his mouth and reaches down into the water, slipping down his stomach to brush her touch along his soft bits. It feels good, but her mouth slides away, panting against his cheek and he opens his eyes to find her brows pulled up in disappointment. _He’s still sick then,_ he figures. 

 

She expects something from down there, and it’s not right - he’s not right. Nux is just a mediocre Warboy after all, and she’s so shiny and chrome and full,  nothing like the rust he is.

 

“Sorry,” he apologizes, even if he doesn’t know what for.

 

Capable smiles sadly, kisses his nose and lips and tells him, “You have nothing to be sorry for…” Then she strokes back up his chest and rests a palm over his engine, sighing softly, “This is working, and that’s all that matters.”

 

-

-

-

-

-

 

It’s dark, it is, but she can make out the faintest curve of shapes, courtesy of the light above and if she blinks hard enough she can see him too, standing in the middle of the darkness where the smell of him is ten times stronger than it has any right to be.

 

“You didn’t help me reach the stars,” she tells him, breathing in the stench of the room and feeling her stomach churn with desire. There’s a feeling of tension before she hears him grunt, stepping back maybe - away from her…

 

Dag steps forward, reaches out into the darkness and finds his chest, her fingers bending on the stiff muscles there. Coma flinches but doesn’t move away, and it’s all she needs to wrap her fingers in the fabric, pulling him in so she can sink another hand in the open collar at his shoulder. For once he seems speechless - no witty prose to counter the way she slides her fingers up his neck, over his chin, thumb on his wet lower lip.

 

His breath is stale and hot, but she kisses him there despite herself and can’t help but laugh when he whines - a sound so similar to a tire leaking air. 

 

“You’ll give me the stars, won’t you?” she asks, biting hard on his lower lip to which he only whimpers and sighs. Something sharp floods over her tongue and without thinking her insides clench on nothing; so empty. _It’s blood_ , she sings and licks at the well it bleeds from, moaning. 

 

“Show me where your bed is or I’ll do this on the floor…” she warns, but he doesn’t move even when she hisses at him. 

 

Coma doesn’t seem to understand, or maybe she’s spooked him by doing this. Maybe she’s no better than Joe at this moment, _but no,_ she realizes, he’s the one that’s come to her all these nights. He took the cut of fabric she left and wears it still over his eyes…

 

Dag thumbs the cotton knotted around his sockets and steadies herself with a deep breath.

 

“Have it your way then,” she mutters, pulling him down to the floor when he stumbles and bangs on his knees, grunting. In the dark, she can only feel where the buttons are on his getup, and in her furious need she feels one tear off, bouncing onto the stone floor.

 

the skitter of it rips at her ears, but there is no stopping her from opening his collar, tugging the sleeves off him even as he squirms to help, or hinder...she’s uncertain.

 

“Tell me this is alright,” she begs him, exposing his bare waist and then even further. She doesn’t see it, but she hears the wet smack of his length on his belly and feels the release of it in the fabric she manages to get down past his hips.

 

 “...please,” she tries again as she slides out of her disguise, feeling the warm, moist air on her naked flesh, nearly singing at the sensation.

 

“Strike me with your claws, sweet...secret, Dag…” he says it like a prayer, and Dag asks no more questions, just shoves him down into the stone, throws her thigh up over his hip and takes his flesh in hand to fill the empty ache below. It takes one smooth motion before he’s within her.

 

Dag chokes on a whimper of her own. It hurts, and it shouldn’t...but he’s not as small she would have hoped for.

 

In the blindness, she can’t see, but she feels, and it’s too large, too soon, but there’s no going back now, so she swallows the pain and rides him as wild as she wishes - relishing each drag of him inside her.

 

He grows slick under her hands, laid out flat on his chest; sweaty and slimy with the paint that’s now gone wet.

 

The smell of him and her meld together and she grunts, inhaling it and tossing her hair back over her shoulder as the heat begins to dampen her own skin.

 

Below her he makes rough, unbridled noises that sound more like animal grunts than those from a human, but it doesn’t matter. Dag doesn’t care about the strange noises or the way his hands finally grasp at her hips, seizing the motion of them and working her in his lap with fast, back and forth motions that throw off her rhythm.

 

“No,” she hisses, jerking her hips. He makes not a single sound, but a violent inhale.

 

The pain fades as she regains control, sliding up and down above him, feeling a spike of sharp pleasure - like a clawed hand grabbing at her insides. Coma releases her hips and without sight she’s thrown when he grasps at her breasts, pulling at the tips where that too sends claws of pleasure into her center. The combination of sensations merge together, fusing into one heavy ache that starts to throb much like she expects, but it’s intense and reliant solely how deep his hard length can reach within her.

 

The sudden absence of his hands on her breasts makes her whine, fumbling for his wrists in the darkness.

 

“No..keep them-” she gasps, groaning loudly as he grasps her shoulder, his other fingers attending to the nub she's only ever found and stroked herself. The little bulb that has taken her to the stars so many times, more than not with him playing his sounds for her as she comes to.

 

Coma’s fingers are not soft, but callused and grating, and the pleasure he brings is similar though no less glorious. When his cock stabs her so sweetly, and his thumb churns her perfectly, he bring the stars down to her, flickering in a kaleidoscope of whites and yellows she shouldn’t be surprised by, but the sound she makes is thus so. And dimly she realizes her nails are breaching the skin of his stomach, drawing forth a sticky wetness that is no doubt blood. 

 

“Sing,” she hears him groan and then he slaps a hand on her backside, lifts up and shoves her naked breasts to his chest, thrusting up into her as the stars burst and birth anew in front of her eyes until a hot wash fills her and he growls, shuddering. 

 

Dag lurches against him, pulling herself off his throbbing length in unbridled panic. The rest of his seed spurts between them, painting her belly…as his hands start to stroke up and down her back, her ribs and arms...testing the muscles in her legs and then back up again as if finally seeing her with his hands.

 

She makes a disgusted noise but does little else as his palms reach back to grasp and squeeze along the meat of her rear, panting against her. It is not him that makes her nose wrinkle - it is the thick ooze of his seed that doesn’t sit well with her. Dag could have done without it...just the smell, though not awful, bring old unhappy memories with it.

 

Coma clicks softly, leans in and kisses the tip of her breast, flicking his tongue at the nub there that still sends a shock through her. She’s already grasped the stars, and yet his tongue makes her want to ride him again.

 

“...thank you,” she mutters, suddenly ashamed of herself as the euphoria begins to grow again.

 

His hands massage her lower back, thumbs rolling into the denser parts of her spine as his lips close over her nipple, sucking it wetly. She did not think this through, she realizes, moaning - did not realize that now the nights would be different. That he might assume she’d chosen him as her Warboy, like Capable has so openly claimed Nux. 

 

Coma hums against her breast, giving it a final lick before roaming to her jutting collarbone. She feels the result of his touches between her legs and it forces her up to her knees to escape the convincing ache in her soaked garden.

 

Just his touch makes her feel stricken and monstrous. She has joined with him on the floor of his dwelling, with little else but a clipped warning and he seemed none the less pleased than if it was done properly. _But what was proper_ , she mused within the darkness. _Was this not also fine as long as they both consented to it?_ And did he not consent?

 

 _He did,_ she remembers, and his caresses prove his feelings on the event…so did his tongue and lips on her skin.

 

“Tonight,” she tells him, covers herself in her wraps and kisses him where she thought his mouth to be, but is his sweaty forehead instead. It is not so easy to ignore to warm slide of his seed down her inner thighs as she greets the light again, leaving him breathing and sighing on the floor still. 

 

Perhaps it's her imagination when she hears his echoing chuckle, or perhaps she’s created a monster.

 


	8. Witness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank Zoadgo, kiss_from_arose, NickieSays, Mickymoon, Liisiko, RubyQuinn, rocko, redcandle17, twiggzzler and Duarte89 for their wonderful, amazing, and helpful comments. And thank you for those that left me kudos as well. It means so much to me.
> 
> Warning for some more possible dubious things in the chapter. Please let me know what you think down below, if you have the time. Enjoy!

That old pain surges in his jaw; it runs around inside the roots of his teeth, and he tastes the blood streaming down his throat like it’s fresher than just an old, buried memory. Slit’s thighs clench and he can feel sweat pour out of his skin as if he’s leaking all that mediocre hope she’s force fed him all this time. (Just like a Breeder - too good to be Immortan’s treasure - to do something so feral.) Just like her to make him mediocre for her, to turn around and slice him up right again.

 

He blinks back the blurred mask on her face - a wet trickle sliding down the side of his temple. Slit didn’t cry then, back when it first happened and he won’t now. The pain in his teeth as he bites down helps, but then something else other than the burning, ripping pain occurs, and he sobs. He sobs like a pup and shuts his eyes tight, thinking that this feeling - a feeling so chrome - is worse somehow. H-she can’t make him feel like this.

 

_“Breathe, Slit…”_

 

And he breathes, gasps more like, as the feeling tears his stomach open. He wants her to shredd him if shredding feels like this. Slit inhales again, shaking like something unstable and opens his eyes.

 

That shit smeg isn’t pinning him down - pushing the knife into his face, cutting him wide or burning him on the inside. (No,) it’s not that nameless bastard. It’s Toasty... _Toast the Knowing._ She’s stroking his hard bit. It’s that traitorous part of him that likes her - the part of him that thinks she’s shine.

 

She’s making him shine. _It feels so shine._ He feels so fucking chrome he doesn’t know if he can stand it any longer. Maybe he ought to throw her off, slam her head into the hard floor so she can’t make him feel it anymore. But something else happens with her thumb, pressing firm on some part of him that makes him pray.

 

“By V8...Valhalla, I am coming,” he chokes, closing his eyes, ready for his glorious death.

 

_She makes the pain end._

 

For once he doesn’t feel the tiny stabs in the arm that isn’t truly there - for once he feels full and not empty and sour. _Toasty_...she’s going to kill him, just like he wanted all this time but has been to mediocre to ask for it. She knew he wanted it, and now she’s giving it to him. She’s a gift from Valhalla, and she’s going to kill him.

 

_“Is it too much?”_

 

Slit shakes his head until he feels empty, and then he growls at her, “Don’t stop...or I’ll shredd you worse.”

 

There’s a noise, like a laugh, but light and soft and he hisses, pushing his hips up as high as he can into the feeling - into the empty void.

 

Another trail of wet slips from his eyes and he hates her again - tells himself he wants her dead, but dead and soft. Then she does something with her wrist and his head slams back into the bunk. _It’s good...it's real fucking good. Fangin’ perfect._ Slit wants her back on the bunk, underneath him. He wants her suffocating around his hard-pressing fingers - intends to reach into that part of her that someone tainted for him, but if it feels so good now that maybe it won’t hurt her as much as he tells himself he wants it to hurt her. 

 

“Look at this...hm?” she whispers, thumbing that spot that makes his breath turn into steam. He cracks his eyes open, absorbs a breath through his teeth and witnesses her hands wrapped around him, “Don’t you see?”

 

He sees. It’s all he can see.

 

She works her palms, fingers and wrists in ways that make his mind reel. It looks like it should hurt. This hard part of him is throbbing, red like pale blood and leaking like a busted pipe. Toast’s dark fingers slip up and down, dragging a looser covering of skin that’s part of the gut stabbing feeling. He feels the touches up in his chest and down his thighs, like fluid flooding an engine.

 

“You just need to close your eyes, alright. I’ll do the work,” she sounds tired and strained, but Slit doesn’t think to relish the tone that might almost hold a bit of fear, just keeps his eyes open and watches as the sensation makes his head go senseless and forces his body to relax. Her white teeth shove into her lower lip, and she’s watching him; scrutinizing him. When he groans she slows and does that thing that felt so good again - a hot palm around the tip of his hard bit, coating that sensitive bulbous thing in heat and moisture and slipping pressure. Her other fist strokes him hard up and down the stem, down and up - wringing something out of him.

 

White light blinks around the brim of his eyes.

 

Slit hears himself howling like someone got him in the dark and pushed a spike in his belly. But it’s not pain or blood or shame... _maybe a bit of shame,_ but he can’t think about it as he watches his broken bit spit hot fluid into her waiting, cupped palm. 

 

_“That’s right...let it go...”_

 

Slit slams his eyes shut as her hips move over his thighs, rubbing against him, doing something to expand the feeling rushing up from his fleshier soft bits. It leaks into his gut, leaving him as that sticky looking wetness. It runs down in white globs, painting the back of her knuckles and the hair that's grown on him around her hands.

 

“Yes, that’s it, Slit,” she whispers, squeezing him hard at the base and stroking up, bringing with it a final leak of goodness and a mediocre sound from his throat. 

 

Almost immediately he feels the hardness soften, and the tears, smeg-tears - that he can’t for the life of him hold in - fall in streams down the side of his face.

 

She’s killed him, but he’s not dead. He’s sobbing like a fucking pup that’s too worthless to suck them up and carry on. Slit’s broken as if he wasn't already broke, and there’s no repairing him now. Doesn’t matter he’s eating more or drinking that addictive water every day. It matters less than rust that he was so close to showing everyone he could Lance just as well if not better with just the one arm. It doesn’t matter because she’s broken him, and he doesn’t even have the energy to push her away because she’s taken that from him too.

 

“Slit…” she urges, shifting around on his lap. 

 

He can’t look at her. Just covers his weeping eyes with the length of his only arm and curls up on his side as best he can. He heaves with the ache of life and what little he has left - if there’s anything left at all she spared.

 

“I’m sorry...sorry…” he feels her wiping him down, cleaning away the stuff he busted out. _Broken and weeping and leaking and worthless. Shattered, but by V8,_ he hisses under his arm and under the tears as the cold, wet touch of the cloth sings that feeling back in his gut. _How can being damaged feel so good…?_

 

In the darkness under his arm, he feels her hands on his chest, stroking him but he doesn’t hate it like he thinks he should. Soft fingers reach his wrist and pull his safety blanket free, blinding him with the blur of tears. Slit doesn’t know why but he hoists himself up, seizes her hard around the waist and hugs her so close he thinks she might melt into his skin. They’ll become a twisted thing; all fused fleshed and welded bones. They'll become one, and then he’ll have his arm back, and he’ll get the stuff back she pulled out of him. He'll be better than he was before.

 

_Better..._

 

It’s just her, and she should mean nothing to him, so when her lips press against his split face and her fingers stroke around his skull, doing something that’s bringing the tears out more but making them less potent, he sobs and curls around her small body. He hides within her, shivers under the gentle pressure and careful scrape of nails, letting himself slowly die with each squirt of moisture.

 

“It’s okay. It’ll be okay...it’s alright, “ and she does these wet mouth presses on the top of his scalp that make his eyes leak all the faster, “...shhh...it’s alright...I promise.”

 

Slit sniffs up the snot running out his nose, wipes at his eyes against her chest and shivers as she touches him. In a way he can still move his half-arm around her back and pull her closer; shove himself further into her.

 

“You’re okay…” she tells him still, repeating it in between mouthing-touches and strokes. Slit can hear the steady throb of her engine. It’s loud and as he twitches, tears still leaking, he tries to play the sound of his own against hers, but finds them so different it hurts his head to attempt to find a common rhythm between them.

 

Toast doesn’t make a sound when he digs his fingers into her spine, pressing so hard the touch makes the joints in them ache. She doesn’t do much but hold him and stroke him and keeps doing it even after the tears have stopped. Slit feels empty but lighter. It’s not like being broke, he thinks. It feels like she lanced a wound, and that white shit was something infected and sick. 

 

Slit rests against her, mouthing the fabric covering her chest and wonders how much he has left in him if he still feels bitter, even underneath the cover of what he feels now. Maybe she’ll drain him like they drained his stub - so one day, he’ll be better than he was before. Maybe he’s been infected all his life, and she knows how to cure him.

 

“You okay?” it’s a question this time, not reassurance and he can’t stop himself from nodding. He’s better now. She made him better, and he can’t remember why he hated her so fangin’ much anymore.

 

“How much is left inside of me?” he asks, bringing her in closer after his loose muscles have let her escape a few centimeters. _She won't be going anywhere anymore._ He has her trapped.

 

She’s silent for awhile, so he knows it’s bad; knows it’s maybe more than she can drain out of him, but she chuckles, and he finds it in him to dislike her for it.

 

“You mean, like pus or something? It’s...not like that,” and she laughs and he shoves her away, sneers, tries to hate her, but it’s all false and wrong.

 

She blinks like some simple-minded pup that doesn’t understand but smiles, and he likes the way it looks, “Every man has that stuff inside them...it’s called semen. Pups grow from it as the green things grow from the seeds. It happens sometimes...I thought it’d help.”

 

“Help what?” he demands, fisting the tiny belts around her waist, jerking her once and then twice before she frowns and tells him, “I thought you’d feel better afterwards...it made him-it...it’s suppose to make you feel good. Didn’t it?”

 

_It did, but…_

 

“Slit...I won’t do it again, alright.”

 

“No!” he growls, trying to drag her back in with his stub and a shaking fist buried in her hip, but she pushes her palms to his chest and resists him. It's easy for her to hold him back - the draining has left him weak.

 

He looks at her, watches the dark circle in her eye shift, examining him for something. Slit forces his face to relax, tries to remove anything telling, but she finds what is was looking for, and he only has a moment to sneer before her puffy lips lay over his mouth. He doesn’t move, but she doesn’t pull away either, just opens her mouth and licks heat on his lips.

 

Slit parts his sneer, unsure...but her teeth touch his own, banging and the pain jolts him, and he sinks his own in her lower lip like he wanted to do before, biting down and grinning as she gasps. Toast threads her fingers along the back of his head, bringing him in closer. His lungs burn, his lips ache, and she moans, setting everything else on fire. It’s like the fever inside the Razor Cola, scorching him like a critter over flames...but he doesn’t feel the urge to pull himself out of her. If this kills him, he’s alright with it. She can kill him if she wants...it’d be a better death than most.

 

-

-

-

-

 

“Here, try it this way…”

 

The boil-infested Green Thumb is slow and gruff, resisting her as Dag intends to move his fingers to the freshly aerated soil. 

 

“This first," she points to the ground, "you need to make a hole with your thumb, then plant the seed - it won’t grow under the sun. It needs the darkness and the damp. You understand?”

 

She doesn’t know how else to explain it. Maybe knowing about them more would help her find parallels, but she cares little about their culture and interests. Either he'll learn, or she’ll send him back down to the garage where he can stick his fingers in engine grease instead of the warm, wet earth. 

 

“No!” she hisses, swatting his clumsy fingers away from the spot already planted and marked. _They are hopeless._

 

“Dumb green things, don’t even taste good - like filth. Filth!” he spits at her and shoves himself off his knees, rushing off. She seethes as quietly as she can, fists her wrappings to keep from standing up to bury her fists in his back, scream at him and kick him out instead of watching him just leave. Her eyes land hard on the retreating Green Thumb, now perhaps a Black Thumb. He disappears through a yield of peach trees and low bushes, beating away the branches. She bites curses into her tongue and turns back to the rest of them, all of which are staring at her with blank expressions.

 

"Keep planting," she commands, but they don't move except for their eyes that are shifted behind her now.

 

Dag furrows her brows, looking to each of her remaining Green Thumbs before turning back around - a chill running down her spine.

 

A stark swatch of red and white cuts the brown and green...and it’s _him._

 

Coma is standing there in the light of day, and he’s so pale and red and everything about him is brutal in comparison to everything else around him. At least in the darkness they are alone, and his features are subdued. Now she in knee deep in soil with the two Green Thumbs watching her stare at the Doof Warrior, that’s sniffing her out like some dog. _He looks naked without his instrument..._

 

“What do you think you’re doing here?!” she asks, more like demands of him.

 

Even under the wraps around his eyes she can see the strange bunching of his brows - the chastised expression. His big teeth are showing between his lips, and something red that must be blood swims between his bottom teeth and lower lip. Dag grimaces, twisting back around to her Green Thumbs, pointing them to the opposite side of the gardens. “Leave us,” she says quickly, and when they just stare, she adds softer, “please.”

 

They do leave, taking with them the damp bucket of seeds meant for another plot. The eldest, Crow Eye, will know what's expected for the right spots...maybe better than her, though it’s a pain to admit such a thing.

 

She hears the crunch of grass and then the soft packing of dirt and finds the Doof Warrior standing only a meter or so away, head tilted to the side.

 

“I said to come tonight - it’s still day…” she seethes as quietly as she can, worried about the hidden ears within the trees.

 

“Day and Night...night and day, dark and light. Pointless,” he tells her as if he’s sharing some secret, but he’s not, he’s standing here in the middle of the day where everyone can see.

 

“They’ve seen you,” she tells him through her teeth, refusing to stand - to go to him, “now everyone will know the Widow Gardener is nothing more than a Breeder still.”

 

Coma frowns, moving his hands in front of him, picking at the old, filthy looking fabric sagging around his waist. He’s dirtier looking under the light of day; she notes, only slightly put off by it. The sight of him didn’t change how good it felt to have him violently thrusting himself up inside her. It does, however, not help her annoyance for him any at this moment. _He doesn't understand_...her authority is ruined now.

 

“One skill within many,” he extends and grins as if he’s complimented her.

 

She turns away from him, crossing her arms across her chest. It was a brash and smeg-like decision, she realizes. Her lust decided for her the course and now those nights she's enjoyed so secretly are gone. Now she has this Warboy visiting her in the daylight with no understanding of why that was insane. _It is pointless explaining it to him;_ she thinks, which only makes her fingers curl into her forearms, digging nails into her flesh in an effort to not claw at him.

 

“Vanish, without a trace,” she hears him grunt; words raspy and his image thwarted. Dag peers back to see him turning, pawing at the low branches, attempting to find his way back in his blindness. Harder now to find his way back, than to her, she reckons. _Without her unhappy voice to follow._

 

“Wait,” she blurts, already regretting having spoken up as he pauses, steadying himself on a branch that isn’t yet strong enough to support him or anyone for that matter.

 

“Maybe I can find some use for you here…” she tries, still regretting so much when he bares his teeth, grins wet and ruined and sits down beside her on the earth with a dull plop. It’s obvious he’s gotten what he came for. But, then again, she got what she wanted from him that morning...what harm was it really in letting him have this?

 

She could always lie if anyone asks his reasons for being here though she doubts anyone would believe her, most of all her sisters and the silent Milk Mothers.

 

Dag points, then realizes, with a sour face, that he can’t see and reaches for the little bucket of damp seeds herself. She mixes the white pearls with her fingers, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck rise as if he’s staring at her. _He has no music now though; he shouldn’t be able to do that…_

 

Coma sniffs, turns to her as if he watches - as if he sees. He has a palm ready for her when she plucks a few seeds for him. 

 

“You need to-” she starts.

 

“Fill the hole with the gem, tuck it down, watch it birth and gently stem…” he sings, humming deep and low enough she feels it in her gut. Dag watches him stab his thumb into the earth after he pats it with his palm. He wipes fresh dirt over the filled hole, packed the ground down and marks it with another shallow finger indent.

 

“How do you…” she marvels, unable to keep herself from shifting closer - close enough her knees bangs against the hard ball of his own, “how?”

 

“ _She,_ ” is all he gives her, except for the raw, honest smile that splits his face like an open wound. 

 

It turns him handsome, somehow and Dag smiles despite herself, biting her lip to keep back the happy laughter she wants to radiate. Instead she ducks her head, hiding her coloring face under a curtain of hair and presses another seed into his palm. If she lingers this time, stroking the softer skin creasing in the middle of his hand...she doesn’t mention it and thankfully, neither does he.

 

-

-

-

-

 

It’s just to be near him; Capable tells herself. It has very little to do with the way his knees shake as he shoves one of them into the ground, reaching under the gutted body of a nameless vehicle, spitting a white hot flame where she can’t quite see - obscured by sparks and dark metal. She needs to leave him be. Nux is no pup for her to care for. He's a man...and she's fawning over him like an old Milk Mother...

 

One of her pups, Piker, is lounging in her lap...well, half in her lap and half on the ground - his skinny arms stretched out so he can scratch noisily at the stone. His vast, scrawny rib cage looks bumpy enough to make music over. She frowns at the sight and looks back at Nux, grinning at another Warboy that’s wiping the sweat from his glistening brow with a dirty rag. An unfavorable feeling rests in her gut while she watches the two work together; closer than they need to. _No,_ she reminds herself, _they all work close._ They don't grasp the concept of personal space.

 

Piker scratches vigorously at the floor, and she looks away from Nux and the Warboy, staring at her wide-eyed pups; waiting.

 

Capable doesn’t mind the sound of his broken nails even if it tickles annoyingly at the back of her head. He’s not palming her breasts, asking for food, and that is enough to be thankful for as she rests the frame of her slim acoustic on his stomach, in her lap. He makes a strange, strangled sound and shifts in her lap.

 

“See everyone, it’s a skill anyone can learn,” she tells them, smiling even if her heart isn’t in it, and her eyes turn to Nux and his companion more than her plucking fingers. The tune she strums is soft and careful. It’s nothing like what they’ve heard played by that blind one on the Doof Wagon. 

 

Zeb and Beanut are sitting below her, Rowtag on his back with a bolt cutter resting on his stomach. She attempted to pry it away from him earlier, but he screamed, apparently being gifted it by one of the older Black Thumbs. Zeb told her it was a claim to Rowtag when he got older, meant he’d be a Driver if the night fevers didn’t get him first. Sometimes she’d wake with Rowtag limp in her arms, hot enough to burn and leave her skin pink where he touched. Most times she thought he was dying, but he cooled after she woke him every time…

 

Zeb, the oldest and tallest - only a couple years away from becoming a Warboy himself - scratches at a yellowing bruise on his chest where one of the Warboy’s jabbed him with some pointed tool.

 

She learned early on not to get between them and their training. The Warboys were hard and unforgiving - that was their job, and her’s was this. Capable slips her fingers down the line of the wooden neck, humming as she plays, still forcing a smile she doesn't feel.

 

Nux was alive, and her pups were getting better, even if Rowtag still burned in the nights. _Life was a gift._

 

“Where’d you get taught?” Zeb asks her, still poking at the bruises and watching her fingers work.

 

“I taught myself,” she sings vaguely. There was zero else to do but learn, read from the word burgers and be bred.

 

Piker stirs in her lap, jostling the guitar, “How’s that a thing? Learning without no teacher?”

 

“Reading and lots of practice,” she says and then smirks at her one-eyed pup, “also lots of failings.”

 

They don’t like the idea of failing even though they do it plenty in their eagerness to emulate the Warboys, but Piker doesn’t sneer at her, just blinks and leans back, scratching at the stone again all the harder. He’ll bloody his fingers, but the boy wants to be a Black Thumb like Nux after he’s seen her fawning over him lately. _Got to build up my hard skin,_ he told her when she found him rubbing his fingers over a file, scuffing his skin until they glowed red.

 

“Come here Beanut," she calls. He comes, on his knees, looking from her to the strings she teases.

 

“This one, pluck this one,” and he plucks it, eyes going wide and then grins just a large. 

 

_“Not anymore you piece of filth!”_

 

Capable turns to see Nux plastered over that Warboy, chest to chest, their noses touching. Nux’s teeth are barred, and the Warboy is grinning. The nameless one sticks his tongue out to lick at Nux’s mouth, getting him to rear back and ram his fist into the side of his head. Capable jerks, watches Nux smash the Warboy’s face in even though they’re both grinning, and no one else seems to care.

 

Even her Warpups are still watching her and her frozen fingers. She cares nothing for music now, and Piker slides out of her lap when she unfolds her legs, thinking that, for some reason, she needs to save him. 

 

But Nux gets thrown on his back, laughing, and the other Warboy leans in to push a hand into his slick engine cuttings. It’s intimate looking, she admits. That mess of worms in her stomach grows at the sight, and she feels heat flood into her cheeks. _Is she jealous… or is she something else._ It’s a guilty and uncomfortable feeling, she knows, but what it means she doesn’t. Still Capable watches as they sit up and shove one another before picking their tools back up - acting as though whatever she just witnesses didn’t happen.

 

As she sits there, her pups all watching and waiting, sensing her strange mood, Capable realizes she hates that other Warboy like she only ever hated Joe - and it’s wrong of her.

 

_“He’ll be ready to go on the run tomorrow.”_

 

Capable whips her head up to find Furiosa standing off to the side, behind Zeb with flesh and metal crossed around her chest. An old, wrinkled looking Warboy stands further back, goggles hiding his eyes that are no doubt on her. He's one of the Warboy on the War Rig before - one that Furiosa spared - the only one she seems to trust at her back. He sniffles, swiping at a bulbous nose and frowns with drooping lips. 

 

Capable thinks he’s assessing her, so she pretends Furiosa’s words don’t cut her like they do. Nux will be leaving...it’s inevitable. 

 

“I’ll need him out there - it’s where he belongs,” Furiosa goes on to say, as though Capable needs convincing. That hard line of her brow, painted in black grease stares down at her like it did before, as if she doesn’t understand; can’t understand.

 

“I know,” Capable mutters, thumbing the neck of her guitar, feeling not one with the present moment. She feels trapped once again, locked away, so she stares at the faces of her Warpups, reminding herself she’s here and not _there._

 

“Good, I’ll be taking him in the morning,” Furiosa tells her, and then as if as an afterthought, “and I’ll be bringing him back.”

 

-

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-

-

 

It’s later in the night, well past the time she should have brought him a nightly meal and checked the tight little stitches on his stub, but this is the fourth time she’s gotten up from her desk, made her way to her door and turned around, sitting back down; aimless. Toast keeps wanting to rehearse her words, whisper something similar to what she wishes to say so maybe she won’t be so lost when he looks up at her with those red-rimmed eyes, expecting some meaning.

 

How can she look at him after what she did. _Stupid and brash._ She was the one that always thought things through first - told everyone else to imagine all outcomes before making their move. But had she thought about what would happen to Slit after he came? Not a single thought for the results except a happier, less grumpy Warboy. _How wrong had she been…_

 

Toast had taken advantage of him, plain and simple. And yet she kissed him too, held him close and whispered sweet little things to him like he was some pup that needed coddling. She loved it - being so wanted and needed and giving him that release, but it was wrong of her too. Something about it didn’t sit well with her, and perhaps that was why she kept to herself, hidden in her room with the little welding rods and soldering gun smoking in its frame. _She's a coward._

 

He needed to eat eventually, and no one else would bring him food since she made it quite clear a dozen times she’d be the one to take care of him. 

 

Toast is still laying out thin slivers of metal when her door creaks and her fingers worm into her second pocket to the left, grasping the bony handle of the knife she stole - another thing taken without asking. 

 

White, black and red expands from the darkness, and Slit - the devil - is leaning against her door frame, pulling in heavy silent breaths. He's painted up like a real Warboy… _like death and malice,_ she thinks sickly.

 

She’s too shocked seeing him in his paint and dark, war-pants to wonder how he got himself all the way down here. His eyes wander around the room, eyeing every corner as if he’s scrutinizing all her collected things, avoiding her altogether.

 

Eventually, she grows restless.

 

“What…?” she mouths dumbly, leaning into the rim of her desk as he takes a wide, hesitant step inside her room, putting a fist into the door where it slams shut. The sound jolts every miniscule cell in her body.

 

“Every filth I asked knew where you slept. Fucking mediocre Toasty. Real mediocre,” his words are nasty, but there’s a tilt to his mouth that makes her release the knife in her pocket. Slit’s eyes go to where her fingers ease out of her pants and looking back at her, she can tell he knows what she was about to pull out.

 

“That ain’t going to save you when four of us come to waste you.”

 

“No one wants to waste me…” she tells him, but it doesn’t sound as sure as she wants it too. (She is sure, though.) None of them have ever shown dislike for her like Slit has, and he’s not as bad as he was before. But he’s here in her room now, and that's more than any of the other Warboys has done.

 

“What’s that?” he’s looking at the stuff strewn on her desk, and then presses his lips together and eyes the sketches pinned to the wooden wall. It’s the arm she’s been working on and in all honesty Toast didn’t think he’d be smart enough to draw any conclusions from them, but he stares and walks closer, understanding on his face. Slit pauses beside her, close enough she can see the cracks in the paint on him and smell that acrid tinge of grease added to the pigments. She wants to wash it off him or more importantly she wants to know who helped him apply it…

 

“Who put this on,” she pokes at his white arm, “and these?” Toast tugs at the thick belt around his hip, sneering. It’s easier to put on a facade of annoyance than it is to let him see how much she’s thrown by him being here. In her space...

 

Slit jerks away, grunting, “Not telling you, that’s for fangin’ sure. Not stayin’ in that bunk anymore either…” it’s a final warning as well as a statement. Toast figures if she pushes him anymore he’ll go feral. But what would that matter, she thinks, eyeing him as he practically shoves his nose in the sketches, thumbing the edges and marveling silently.

 

“...this is for me, isn’t it?” he mutters - something in his voice she can’t pinpoint but is similar to hope and resentment and fear and-

 

“Think it’ll work? You think I’ll be poppin’ Buzzards on the Fury Road again?”

 

 _Hope,_ Toast thinks. That’s hope in his voice, and she wants to tell him he will, but hope is fragile, and she’s worked too hard to tell him a lie and have those crumble too. She's already messed up with the whole cock and orgasm thing earlier...

 

Instead Toast tugs at his wrist, waits for him to eye her from the side of a very stern, unhappy face before she forces a smile and tells him, “That’s the plan…”

 

Slit stiffens, staring at her hand around his arm, and then looks into her eyes, searching, grasping and eventually - when she releases his wrist - he smirks, raising his chin, "Toasty...you're as kamikrazy as they come."

 

 _She is,_ she thinks, grinning.

 


	9. Dead But Rising

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to redcandle17, Zoadgo, Jaetion, Liisiko, RubyQuinn, twiggzzler, NickieSays, Trippy+Hippie and Neko for their wonderful, amazing, and helpful comments. And thank you for those that left me kudos as well. It means so much to me.
> 
> Here's a little Toast and Slit kissing http://brimbrimbrimbrim.tumblr.com/post/131459656958/smoochy-toast-and-slit-are-here-to-tell-you

Sikes had it coming, shouldn’t have tried to snatch away the fuel tubes he ripped from the burnt Camaro Imperator Furiosa brought back during the second salvage run. 

 

_First to the pile, first to the scrap._

 

Rules were rules, and sure, Sikes was slick about it, pretending to be reaching for a rag, but Nux saw him, got him good in the ribs with his heel and beat him black when he tried it again. 

 

The tubes were his and Imperator Furiosa wanted him out on the road three nights from now. He’d get the rusty beast up and running real chrome and hot before then - with enough time left to test the ‘buet out.

 

Sikes wasn’t getting in the way of him driving again. The only thing better than the drivin’ was Capable, but she wasn’t around - still out with the Warpups. 

 

It was mediocre of him, but Nux wanted to be a Pup again so he could flank her day in and day out without everyone looking down on him. Be good just for a day or two, and then he could spend some nights curled up on her chest, hands on her breasts since that one Pup seemed to be allowed to pull on them when he wanted.

 

He’d be mediocre for her.

 

Sikes kicks out for the tubes for a third time and Nux, throws him back, straddles him hard and pulls at his throat with his black fingers.

 

“You want some more then? - ain’t dying dead yet, buzzard-bait,” Nux bites at his nose, but Sikes jerks back, scrambling away and kicking up metal dust on his rush out the hangar. 

 

It’s his first fight since the Fury Road and his engines kicking up strong enough he could go burning rubber after him, but the rusting hull of his new ride calls him back more than the singing of smackin’ flesh. 

 

Besides, Capable would be upset if he came back with more bruises anyway. She’d be too smart to be fooled if he just slapped more paint over them too - too aware for that. Intelligent, sweet Capable. Too good at reading him to fall for anything so rusty.

 

Nux smiles wide, sniffling up some of the blood Sikes got his nose to leak before Nux sent him to the floor. She's so chrome - and when he thinks of her, he thinks of her without those wrappings...and his bits tingle.

 

He's thinking about her now, about ready to put his heel between his legs and rub away the itch that's not an itch but an ache, when a pain coats his temple. The stone ground smacks up at his temple, and the world goes empty before he’s shoved down - an angry, scratching weight on him.

 

_“Fuckin’ traitor filth - I got you now!”_

 

 _Slit,_ Nux thinks...dazed...everything breaking and blurry.

 

Another fist rams into the back of his skull, and it hurts and Nux goes blind, but he’s got the blood lust too and the engine oils made him slick so when he twists and plants his knees it’s easy to roll free. 

 

He manages to get on top his Lancer, but Slit's always been real good at brawling and he wraps his fingers around Nux's throat as his sight comes back - not much help but better than the black. It's suffocating him, but it also feels familiar and comforting.

 

“Sli-slit!” Nux cries, excited and gasping, but Slit’s face is burnt and scabbed, and he’s only got the one arm, and Nux starts to choke around Slit’s fingers despite how glad he is to see him. His Lancer's staring up at him with hate as fierce as the stuff he normally saves for Buzzards. No more Lancing for him now, though...no wonder he’s feral.

 

Nux could drive with one arm...but Lancin' with just one? _Nasty bit of luck..._

 

“Fuckin’ fight me!” he hisses, spit flying in Nux’s face, but Nux doesn’t want to fight him. His Lancer’s busted and broken and upset - worse than he’s ever been before. No way is he going to fight him with the one arm and the blindness in his eyes worse than Nux’s.

 

Slit howls, rolls Nux over on his side, bangs his skull on the stone, and Nux feels like he might toss up, but then Slit rolls off him, lays flat on the ground beside him and snorts. Defeated without Nux ever throwing a punch.

 

When Slit grunts, cursing, Nux feels sick and weak. Mediocre, maybe, but it's sympathy really - Capable would know how to explain that one to him.

 

“...gutter trash, fangin’ scum...don’t know why I don’t fuckin’ shredd you. Don’t know anything anymore.”

 

Nux swallows the rancid mash threatening to purge from his throat, and then turns on his side and sucks down a grunt of his own. His cage feels busted again; dented and it’s hard to breath proper-like. It’s better on his knees, but then he can see Slit, and he’s wearing that look he gets at night when it’s just them and the nightmares come. 

 

Looking around he sees a few Warboy’s stealing looks, one moving close and curious. _Won’t let them see him like this,_ Nux thinks, pulling Slit up under the arms even though his cage burns and Slit throws him back into the husk of the car with a loud sneer that’s covered in spit. Slit doesn’t fight when Nux grabs at him again, pulling him out of the hangar to the deserted corridors, echoing with wet drips and reeking of sour fungus.

 

Slit’s eyes rest on Nux, still angry but wet too.

 

“Broke my cage ya’ know...Capable’s gonna be real upset now,” Nux tells him, laying a palm on the swollen sore bundle on his side.

 

“You deserve worse than that. Should have gone out soft in that bunk….fuckin’ pups should have smothered you.”

 

“...you don’t mean it.”

 

“Do too, you mediocre-shit…”

 

Nux glares, searches the ruin that is Slit’s face. He’s more chrome than before. A splatter of shiny burns beaming on his face and chin, down his neck and chest and deeper still past the pants. 

 

“You get your bits burnt off too?” Nux asks, ready to pull Slit's pants back and look inside, but he jerks like Nux has got a knife at his belly, hissing. It’s not like him, but Slit wouldn’t have tried to shredd him either.

 

“No bits," he figures, "How’re you gonna drain yourself then?” Nux grins, going to shove a fist into Slits shoulder - like old times, but his Lancer spits, smacking his arm down. 

 

Nux’s head lurches, but he shakes it off. Won’t do to have shiny, beautiful Capable find him boneless on the ground, but Slit’s not tackling him anymore and no matter how much Nux knows he couldn’t handle a real beatin’ right now, it bothers him that he’s not getting pummeled. 

 

_Something's wrong with Slit…_

 

“You getting drained too then?” Slit mutters, looking over Nux’s head, blinking and frowning.

 

“Everyday…” he nods.

 

All the aqua cola and sweet, juicy things Capable brings him to keep him going. 

 

 _Like you're supposed to,_ he hears Capable reminding him. It’s normal, and it’s why he’s healing faster now than he would have before.

 

Nux grins when Slit chokes on his spit, scratching at his throat as he struggles to control his breathing. 

 

Normally Nux is the one that’s always fighting for breath. Slit looks panicked and only when he clears his throat, growling, does Nux see something like understanding cross his face. 

 

 _‘Bout time…_ he grins.

 

-

-

-

-

 

The sun bakes her smooth, delicate skin and the wind fans the savoring smell up his nostrils. The Dag has accepted him during the days now when the heat is thick and dry and feels like a life well-lived on his face. 

 

 _“Like this?”_ she asks, sweet and melodic - like music and song and poetry. 

 

Coma reaches out, touches her wrist and slides his fingers down her bony knuckles, joints and then dirt coated nails to the delicate clipping. The edge is angled and sharp where the fibrous matter has been cut.

 

“It’s color?” he asks, ragged and swollen and nothing like her gentle voice.

 

“Green, bright green - still fresh.”

 

“Perfect then, culled and ripe." But he knows that - can smell it. "Lay it in the bucket, cut limb first.”

 

Water sloshes and she breathes and returns, taking his hand in her own. 

 

His cock is hard and has been since she teased it when no one was looking - brushing her moist fingers against him, from navel to the tip of his cock. Such a light, innocent touch to illicit such violent thoughts. 

 

Coma won’t deny he wants to lay her out as an offering for himself, bite at her breasts like the peaches she gave him yesterday, but she is skittish despite her bold touches. 

 

He’ll be her offering when she wants to carve him out and flay him open. The Dag may shredd him when she feels the urge and for now she seems content to let him throb between his legs, as she snips fresh sprouts from the base of the apple trees. Sometimes he thinks he knows the telling smirk on her face where she enjoys her own form of slow torture.

 

At the air, he plucks away, pretending each flick of his fingers births out new sound and comforting music, but it doesn’t distract him from the way his cock aches every time she brushes against him, closer now that they are alone in the thick growth of young trees.

 

“She taught you this then?” Dag begins, more rustles of delicate branches and the soft snip of the clippers, “Who is _she_?”

 

Coma tilts his head, and clicks the inside of his cheek, thinking he knows where she’s looking, and she’s looking at him.

 

Maybe she’s expecting him to tell her, but he won’t. Only one who knew is dead, and even that soul didn’t deserve to know in death. One day, perhaps, he’ll tell her. For now it’s his secret to keep just as she keeps her thousands more.

 

“Fine,” she sneers after a while of silence, “As long as she won’t find me in the night and carve out my heart for what I did to you,” this she says quiet but no less sour.

 

To have The Dag jealous is something to behold and he can’t help but grin, even though he knows she sees and feels the wave of anger rolling off her. 

 

The gentle, quiet movement of her clipping and dunking dies out, and he clicks his teeth, searching. She touches him before he can know her and presses him down into the grass before he can make a sound. _Yes,_ he hisses - _defile me again,_ he urges, shifting under her and groaning with a thrill as her warmth straddles his hips.

 

“Would she shredd me for doing this…?” she asks, unbuttoning his onesie from his chest to his navel. He shakes his head without thinking, forgetting to drag out her wrathful need to possess him. 

 

The warm air feels like a second skin. Coma inhales and smells her - that cloying aroma when she brings herself the stars under the moon fills his senses. _Yes,_ he grins again. She’ll take from him what she wants, and he’ll give it gladly.

 

Her touch on his cock is better than music, unpracticed though it is. 

 

Fabric shifts, her breathing goes quick and shallow. Her fingers push into his hips and her warm, wet center presses along his length, slipping and sliding and making him bleed where his teeth puncture his lip, trying to be silent for her. 

 

In the day - where anyone can press open the green and see her with him, doing this to him, makes him swallow the need to toss her back and take her for himself. But he has calm - has patience, and it hurt her last time. This time, he’ll need even more willpower than before. _Let her take her time,_ she'll feel better for it and so will he.

 

Coma fists the grass at his sides, smells the flood of the earth and the sweet smell of her and swallows the blood in his mouth as she rocks gently over him, sighing soft and shaken, “...you’re mine...I want you as mine - please, say you will be.”

 

He nods only, without his teeth in his lip he’ll grunt and groan and hiss and maybe drip words she doesn’t want to hear, but she sees it because he hears her laughing with relief and moans desperately. Coma waits and waits. Waits for her to take his cock and guide him inside her suffocating hold, but she’s in no hurry...hurry...hurry…

 

Please, let her allow him to make his mess inside her like before - when it had felt like music and shredding, war, and life. That morning he couldn't even manage to pull himself off his floor for hours after she left. 

 

“Not her’s…” she whispers, whining like it hurts, but he’s not inside her yet so it shouldn’t.

 

“Mine,” and then she sobs, nails curling in his skin, pushing in pain and pleasure all at once and her hips slip up sharp and push back down, up and down and then there’s nothing more but her hot presence draped over him and her warm breath coating his face. She has found her stars and left him blind all without him every tasting the feel of her clenching around him.

 

Coma pulls up the earth, grass stuck under his nails and seizes her hips before she leaves him entirely. It is not patience - no, but if she leaves him bereft of her he will die where she leaves him and when he drags her hips forward rubbing her dripping core over his cock, she doesn’t bat him away like he thinks she could do - would do.

 

No, The Dag grins, and he knows it because her whimpers and moans tell him, and she forgets to be quiet and rides him until he doesn’t care he’s not within her anymore. Only cares he feels is if they are caught and if she’ll punish him for that like she did before. He’ll be a naughty one for her if it means this and more of this.

 

He swallows the blood welling between his teeth and cheeks and grunts - the rush of it coming up from his groin and whispers, “Stars are inside you, Sweet Dag...burning and bright. I see them...” 

 

Coma sees, knows and her hips race in his lap without him guiding them. She leans down on his shoulders and churns against him, panting and whimpering and gasping, and he sees the stars like (she) must see them - dots and bursts, like twitches in the nothing, and the greatest weight pressing down on him and lifting just as quickly. 

 

“...yes…” and she must find them again too because her moans go sharp and clogged and then her hips buck and the pleasure in his gut goes so keen he jerks violently against it.

 

The sun is warm on his chest, and the wind is cool where his seed stains his stomach, and it’s better than music and better than song and better than life and The Dag just laughs with the rustle of leaves and the sound of air.

 

 _Yes,_ Coma grins, _she can flay him open all she craves._

 

-

-

-

-

 

Capable lays within the blankets - her pups warm and boneless around and above her. She blinks her eyes open, watching the darkness expanding from in front of her nose all the way up to the low, moist ceiling. _Any moment now,_ she thinks, counting down and listening as the sound of motion grows and the _click clack_ of steps and metal start to birth anew. When the loud shouting starts, metal on stone - she breathes a sigh and feels her warm pile grow cold as her Warpups scramble awake, leaving the safety of her pile for the beginning of the day.

 

Beanut kisses her cheek before he leaves, hiking up his sagging pants and shouting not to be left behind.

 

_One, two, three...four...five…_

 

At _ten_ she sucks in her lower lip and reaches down to lift up her skirts, shifting the moist fabric covering her center to the side with shaking fingers. She awoke with an ache and the dim remembrance of Nux gasping and jerking between her thighs, calling her _‘copper and chrome’_ and...it had been a dream.

 

 _Only a dream._ But she’s been awake for a long while now, and the ache never went away and soon she was praying for _The Call_ to start so she could rid herself of it. The lengthy anticipation of finally being alone has made her body a mass of pressure - with only one intention in mind. 

 

It’s not as though she hasn’t already done this to herself once or twice before, and always to the image of Nux, but this is the first time she’s stroked between her thighs with a fresh, almost real image of him being between them. This dream was the first of it’s kind, and it’s like a sickness in a way, but Capable stretches her back, her limbs and neck and chews her lips as her body screams in rapture. It feels so crude - so much more raw and swollen than it’s ever felt before, and she can see him so perfectly in the darkness.

 

_His shoulders are bunched, and his arms are a mass of stringy muscle, sweaty and dirty, holding himself up as he churns and ruts inside her. That heartbroken, vulnerable tilt to his lips and his brow - the same look he gave her when she dared to run the back of her fingers over the puffy scars on his lips._

 

Capable shuts her eyes and see it in perfect clarity and without thinking she lets her finger slip inside herself. _Like a knife,_ she hums, twisting on her belly to muffle her loud groan into the blankets. 

 

 _Life,_ she chants, not knowing whatever to sing her pleasure to - what could be so powerful enough to create this part of her body that feels so good? 

 

It’s impractical; she thinks smiling with open lips and panting breathes. 

 

It’s impractical to have her arm trapped underneath her, but she can feel her heart thudding hard against it, and when her wrist turns, stroking and plunging with her fingers, she can feel the jump in her lower belly. 

 

_So visceral and depraved…_

 

Capable pictures Nux behind her, tracing the curve of her spine, telling her how chrome and shiny she is - how he’s not worthy of her but still manages to shove his fingers inside her. Thanks to the dream it’s easy to pretend her slim fingers, are his own, especially when she stuffs another long digit inside herself, gaping into the blankets.

 

“Oh...Nux...oh, Nux…” she’s quiet, or at least she hopes she is. It feels so wonderful she can’t even manage to look and check the dim open corridor. It’s empty - it always is at this time...always.

 

Nux curls his long, heavy finger inside her - in truth just two of her own - and she curls up onto her knees, opening her thighs as the feeling grows into a burning, licking fire. When she reaches her climax it is powerful, but it doesn’t last long, and no amount of stroking and hissing can drag it out any longer than those beautiful short seconds while it crests. 

 

Her heart is hammering and still she wants more.

 

She’s unsatisfied, as she has come to expect after touching herself as she’s been. She wants Nux...it’s all she wants now...he came back to her, and now he’s all she can think about and it’s worse now that he’s back to his revhead ways. The car he’s working on receives all his extensive strokes and longing looks.

 

Capable has been forgotten, and it aches worse than the one she just tried to extinguish.

 

She lays in the blankets, now twisted around her ankles and stifling instead of warm and cozy. Capable rests there for longer than she should before eventually rise and setting the sheets on their hooks and sweeping away the dust left behind by her Warpups. It’s lonely…it’s cold and there’s something missing and it’s Nux.

 

Back in the pool, when she had Nux flicking the warm water, blushing and smiling - he had been soft between his legs, even though his kisses had been passionate. The sounds that leaked from his lips made her think...think she’d find him hard, but he wasn’t and she told herself she was just happy to have him there, which was true and honest. 

 

It didn’t mean she didn’t want more from him, though. 

 

_“Still pining after your dumb Warboy…?”_

 

Cheedo is standing in the archway, arms crossed and shoulders hunched. For once she’s not accompanied by a gaggle of Warpups - for once they are both alone.

 

Capable isn’t sure whether to tell Cheedo she’s wrong, that Nux isn’t dumb or to admit he’s not hers. She does neither, just ignores her youngest sister in favor for her own messy hair. Her fingers are stiff, but she makes do with her back to Cheedo. It’s not how she normally is...but the climax she gave herself has left her feeling sour.

 

That sweet dry smell of her sister floods her nostrils and immediately after, there are gentle fingers pulling the hair from her grip, twinning the strands more expertly than anyone else can.

 

“I’m sorry,” Capable whispers, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me...”

 

“Same things that's wrong with everyone else,” Cheedo replies, indifferent.

 

“How so?” the only one of them that seems hopeless after a Warboy is her, and it’s more than apparent to her sisters she’s going nowhere further than the kisses they keep catching her stealing.

 

“It’s even gotten into The Dag. If I’m not careful I’ll be nipping at some Warboy’s heels too...you have permission to put me down if that starts up. Promise me? - Kill me first,” Cheedo demands, but Capable can’t tell if she's joking or if she’d truly find death better than what Capable feels for Nux. Though, this is news about Dag. What or who, exactly, has caught her fancy.

 

“Do you know who Dag wants to bite? I- I haven’t seen her since…” somehow she knows before Cheedo tells her; a sneer in her flanging voice...the Warboys gossip just as her sisters do. She's heard things...

 

_‘The Doof Warrior. The Blind Boy...Coma.’_

 

“Toast saw her going down where the moles are. Some Warboys told her about it after they watched her follow him down to his dumb hole in the ground...she actually bred with him! What’s wrong with everyone? What’s happening?!”

 

_‘Like a sickness.’_

 

It’s not a sickness, nor a disease or an affliction - it’s nothing that Cheedo describes.

 

Cheedo goes on, twisting the end of her copper hair into a beautiful long braid, “And Toast, with that one...all cut up and physically inept. She did something to him too...I know it. And you want to do it with Nux too.”

 

Capable blushes, recalling her body writhing in the blankets, moaning for Nux while she did her best to forget the fingers inside herself had been her own.

 

“It’s normal,” Capable says softly as Cheedo combs her fingers through the other half of her hair, beginning the delicate twists and folds down the wild length. 

 

“There’s nothing wrong with them...they’re just men, some of them are a little wilder than others, but they’re nothing like we were told. Nux...he would have given his life to save us…” He didn’t though, and she shuts her eyes and prays like she’s seen The Dag pray. Maybe Cheedo won’t understand. Perhaps she can’t - not now, but that’s alright.

 

_One day she’ll understand…_

 

“I guess,” her sister mutters, tying the last braid gently, “that one Drummer has been kind...and Nux and the rest.”

 

Capable grins, twisting her waist to find Cheedo’s sun-drenched skin flushed warm and red.

 

Quickly Cheedo comments, frowning, “They’re still disgusting.”

 

They laugh, but Capable disagrees. Nux is beautiful.

 

-

-

-

-

 

“What the hell are you doing-hey! That _is_ private!” Toast pulls him back by his half-arm, looking at all the parts she’s pilfered for the past thirty-three days. Slit just shove her back, growling - teeth bared and stained.

 

“Not touching nothing, just addin’ to the pile," he shakes his shoulders and huffs, "it’s all rust anyway,” he mutters. 

 

He glares at her as he starts pulling parts and rubbish from his pockets, throwing them in the pile with pain-inducing clanks of metal on metal. Some of his looks go to the tools, but most of his disdain is directed at her. It's annoying, but Toast ignores it quickly enough.

 

“And what is all this for exactly?” she demands.

 

“The arm, Toast the Knowing,” he tells her like it’s obvious, and she should be more than ashamed for not knowing.

 

She's not a mind reader, besides that pile wasn't for the arm...

 

“What happened to you?” she asks instead of insulting him. He’s covered in dust, and his elbow is scratched and crusty with red, but he’s moving and sliding around like he’s on the hood of a car or a perch, hapless, and it’s hard to believe he was still stuck in bed a week ago. 

 

He slams the last tool, like a file or something, into the pile and curses, “Mediocre piece of shit! Traitor filth - they got his carcass working on a car like he’s some fuckin’ Immortan now. Where’s my Pup - my tools...what do I get for livin’,” he howls, fuming and spitting. 

 

It's unsettling - the way he is panting with rage. And it's a skin he's pulled on so quickly that Toast feels sick and bangs into her desk without realizing she was backing away from him. But she’s never seen him physically upset like this, well she has but...he’s armed. Toast can see - see the knife strapped to his belt and the way his fingers twitch around it makes her stomach drop.

 

“Nux’s is getting drained every day. I’m more chrome than him, and I’ve only been drained once…”

 

Toast arches a brow, wondering if he means- Oh. The orgasm thing she did to him. She bites her lip to keep from laughing once he starts biting at the inside of his cheek, grumbling.

 

So that means Capable is jerking Nux off every day? That’s impossible, or it isn’t and her assumption that the goofy Warboy was sterile was more than wrong. It’s impressive, and she feels like poking fun at her sister for this news, but Slit has thrown himself on her bed, lying among the tool and the sharp things she’s _collected_ looking hatefully up at her ceiling. That should be painful for him, but maybe he's more used to something like that than the soft bed she had him laid up in.

 

“I didn’t think you could be jealous," she smiles, "being the best and all that.” 

 

Toast chuckles when he throws a bitter sounding _smeg_ at her. She smirks even when he turns his head to glare at her. It’s a scary look, there is no doubt about that, but it’s no less than he’s given her daily, and she’s not worried by it anymore. He’s soft at heart sometimes though she’d never say so. Not unless she wanted him shredding her like he’d threatened but never done so many times now.

 

“Feel like I could use another drain,” he mumbles, looking at himself and putting a palm over his crotch where his squeezes himself vigorously, wincing. Looking so confused and pent-up it hurts.

 

“Don’t do that,” she tells him instead of helping him with the problem, “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

 

Slit obeys her, removing his hand but then she watches him sneer and push his fingers between his stomach and belts, feeling down until his big hand can’t reach any deeper. Then he deflates, sighing and curses himself before closing his eyes.

 

“Listen,” Toast begins, pushing herself off her desk to stand over him, “It’s not called getting drained - it’s not something you need to be healthier. You do that because it feels good, and you want to and you can do it yourself too. If I don’t want to, you are more than able to.”

 

“How?” he opens his eyes and arches a black brow, looking so much less imposing it almost throws her off. Her confidence was firm while explaining it to him, but now that he’s actually asking her how to pleasure himself Toast doesn’t know what to do but blush like a damn fool. But he’s looking up at her expectantly and won’t budge even when she shakes her head.

 

“Just uh-o-open up your pants...that’s a start - first step,” she tells him and watches him work with the one hand at the buckles, slowly getting them open and shifting his hips until they’re down his thighs.

 

Of course he’s hard...he would be if he wanted her to drain him. Toast grimaces at the dumb name he’s given it. She only hopes that won’t be a common term for it now among all the Warboys.

 

“Put your hand around it and just stroke it...like I did.”

 

Slit does just that and winces, rolling his head back and licking his lips, but it doesn’t look like he’s enjoying himself all that much - just looks frustrated.

 

“Doesn’t feel as chrome,” he admits, grumbling but she watches him touch almost gently around the head of his cock, exploring himself, thumb running down and fist closing at the top four inches or so before stroking up, loose and careful. That seems like he likes that better…

 

He hisses and bucks his hips and Toast looks away, cheeks running hot as he jerks himself off on her bed with the enthusiasm of someone eating for the first time in weeks. Her eyes shift from him to the floor, but always back up to him as he gasps when he does something that obviously feels magnificent and does it again and again. 

 

 _It’s just so she knows more about the male genitalia,_ she thinks, staring at Slit as he makes himself spill all over his furious hand and tense stomach. It’s for when and if she wants to be an Organic Mechanic later in life, and that's the only reason she doesn’t look away while spurts of his seed flow from the red beaten tip of his cock. It doesn’t make her inside clench around nothing. It doesn’t do a damn thing…and it's not so she knows what he likes when-if she does it to him again.

 

But it doesn’t matter how much she denies it, because looking at Slit, sweaty and panting and stroking his well-used flesh with a big fucking smile on his face, makes her want to feel that way too...

 

_She's fucked._

 


	10. Red Eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to twiggzzler, Liisiko, redcandle17, NerdyGinger2307, Arya and Z-Til-B for their wonderful, amazing, and helpful comments. And thank you for those that left me kudos as well. It means so much to me.
> 
> Warning for mild dubious consent towards the end...I'm not sorry.

_The Call_ starts up like a second inside-engine and for a moment Nux thinks they’re too early - that it's still dark. No reason to head out in the night when all you got are your beamers and your eyes to avoid the Buzzard holes, filled with all those rusty spines and beams, meant to spear you like lizards. But a ray of light breaks in through the Bunker halls and Nux is on his feet without thinking. 

 

 _The Call's_ not early. He's late.

 

He slept all through the night...and he dreamt too - of copper hair and chrome skin, all wet and smooth, flowing like smoke through his fingers. The distant, cloying smell of something sweet, like how the pink thing tasted in his mouth, but this was in his nose - is still there, lingering. Never before had sleep felt so good. Nux wanted to curl back over his hard, stone bunk, close his eyes, ignore _The Call_ and fall back into whatever brought him that smell and phantom feeling of touching and pleasing.

 

His soft bits tingle and stir while he pulls on his pants. When he rubs them with the heel of his hand - presses the rough black canvas over soft, sensitive skin - something in his gut pulls, making his breath run dry. 

 

This was a different choking than what Larry and Barry used to do - this was good and bad all in one.

 

And the ache between his legs stays with him even when he pushes through the throngs of Lancers and Revheads, buckling his last belt while heading to the new ‘buet finished just yesterday. No time to test her out, unfortunately. So today he’ll be driving fresh and green with the new Ford Fairlane he coined Redlane: painted in large red burger symbols on the sides. 

 

His new Lancer, Boil is already perched on the back, stamping his boots into the deck once he spots Nux - the Warboy should still be named a Pup, but too many were lost on the Fury Road, and the Pup was thick enough in the arms and good enough with the thundersticks to get bumped by Imperator Furiosa after the return. _The Call_ , shredding and bouncing off the walls by the Doof Warrior pierces his ears as the Lancer kicks with the rhythm, licking at the air.

 

He’s no Slit, but Nux figures he can’t be all that bad if he’s on the Redlane - if Imperator Furiosa let him on it.

 

Be better if Boxcutter was his Lancer, but the Garageboy is only good at fixing stuff that Nux brakes. He likes Boxcutter - that burnt up face of his was a comforting sight when he got back on the line, and except for his scuff with Slit, he was the only one kamikrazy enough to fight him when Nux needed to let off steam. Ever since Capable started with her kisses and touches, he’s been needing the fights more than he used to. Boxcutter was always happy to supply those - but this Boil seems less eager to bond with his Driver and more eager to pop Buzzards.

 

But that was what he's supposed to do - and maybe one day Slit would learn to Lance with his other arm. They could strap him up on the perch with bungees like they do The Doof Warrior, or one of the Garageboys could fit him with an arm of chrome like Imperator Furiosa, but maybe Slit wasn’t important enough for that…

 

“Ready to paint sands in red, Driver Nux?!” Boil yells over the fumes and revving engines. Nux would rather have Slit there than anyone else.

 

Nux nods, unable to keep himself from grinning despite the newness of his Lancer. The tingle in his soft bits picks back up once he cranks the engine - letting all cylinders fire and spit. _Rattle and roll._ The bucket seat is hard and cold, but the engine heats it up, and the raw metal picks up the juices just right, banging under his body as the Redlane purrs.

 

The vibrations sing between his legs, making Nux simper and groan. It never used to feel like _this_...it was good - always good to put life into a glory of chrome and hard parts, but this was different. The red, bloody-colored wheel makes his fingers shoot with soft spikes and the rumble from the gas pedal races up his thighs, straight between his legs. 

 

The lift lowers, jerking the Redlane and Nux chokes down a moan.

 

_“Kamikrazy Warboys! Who are we?! -”_

 

Nux bites his lips, feeling the lift shaking something real shine up into his soft bits. The morning red that slices past the stone floor, casting out kilometers away, reminds him of his dream - of Capable's copper coating his face. Of that sweet taste in his nose and something wet and warm wherever he touched her. 

 

The memory, the smell that wasn’t really there anymore, all the rumbling going up into his gut; festering, along with the anticipation and every other sodding shiny feeling makes him feel like he might explode. It isn’t like before - it’s incredible and with Boil in the perch, yelling to another fresh Lancer while they’re lowered, Nux reaches down, not knowing what he’ll find but not expecting his soft bits to be hard and stiff.

 

“Glory…” he moans, eyes rolling back while the lift sinks deeper down the Citadel - while he pushes his palm over himself, picturing Capable running a wet hand over his V8, stroking him with soft kisses and gentle nips. 

 

It feels like he’s got metal in his pants - pure uber-chrome. Like his skin ate up whatever chrome was made of and gave him whatever the engine felt when he gave it straight Nitro. 

 

It feels real shine. Better than being behind the wheel, with a dozen Buzzards on the rear wheels. Nux grabs at the stiff length, squeezes and slams his head back into the tattered head rest. _What if he couldn’t drive with this?_

He rubs again, curls his stomach and drowns on the sensation. _Glory it was so fangin’ shine..._

 

“Capable,” he whimpers, opening his eyes just as the lift settles, jerking him - hand and hard bits shifting, making him curse. Had to ignore it - had to grab the wheel, throw down on the gas and drive. Which he does, but the hard bits never seem to let up.

 

They never go soft, even when Imperator Furiosa, at the roof of the Gigahorse turns, shouting the course and they turn, peeling off down thru Rock Rider territory - a long trail of haze kicking up in their wake.

 

-

-

-

-

 

It doesn’t matter now; Dag thinks as she feels her insides shiver and clench, sucking him as though to pull out more than just what he is supposed to give. She lets go a sound loud enough to echo within his hole for seconds more after he gives her the stars. Infusing the full amount of life within her blood - hot, sweet and bubbling.

 

“...yess…” she sighs, feeling his hands parting her thighs wider, thumb resting against the well-attended bud now throbbing pleasantly.

 

 _‘Give me the earth and stars and then you’_...she whispers to herself as though he can’t hear her here, or always.

 

Even The Warboys, with their guzz-powered fire torches, hear her most like when Coma thrusts up into her, deep and intoxicating enough to blind and all she feels is that dark, throbbing flare of pleasure - spiking within a place inside her she can’t name. Her screams are happy and eager - something she didn’t think possible until him.

 

They’ve already talked - the Warboys, the Pups, and her sisters - of the secret she thought she could keep so foolishly. It doesn’t matter they know, though - in fact; she wants them to know. Wants them to understand and listen and talk and seek _this_ with someone as she does with him. Everyone needs to feel as she feels and as she hopes and knows Coma feels too. There is nothing better...

 

Someone knew what happened that day in the orchard as well. She heard that little tale from Cheedo, who had nothing but sneers to give though Dag could do nothing but smile.

 

_‘You have gone insane, mad...disgusting you let that foul man mark you and you say you want more?’_

 

 _Yes,_ Dag sighs again. He might leave bruises on her thighs and hips in his passion, but she doesn’t take them unwillingly.

 

It didn’t need to be a secret anymore - it never did. And no one has looked at her differently for it, and if they have it has not been the reaction she feared. They seem almost...respectful in their voyeurism. Aside from Cheedo, who was never touched and has no need to banish the bad with what it's supposed to feel like - no one had judged her for someone that’s being used or using.

 

Coma whimpers - she can hear the lip he’s gnawing on by the stifled noises he makes as she rolls her hips on his lap slowly, now that she’s tender and pleasantly sore after her climax. The languid motions only seem to thrill him more, and his scratchy palms and calloused fingers leave raised tickles down her thighs and back up around her rear.

 

When he gives her his seed, it doesn’t make her nose wrinkle like it did before. There is even something pleasant about the moist, gushing sensation - as if he’s injected her with another level of the bliss already flooding her limbs like sunlight on the branches up high.

 

It feels right instead of wrong.

 

“Thank you,” she whispers to him, feeling the twitches in his bare stomach as the feeling strangling him lets up, deflating him underneath her. This time, her knees are cushioned by his bunk, and there is nothing for her to feel guilty about. For the first time, maybe, she feels on even ground with him.

 

When he starts to soften inside her, Dag is almost reluctant to let him slide away. This morning was better than any other...and for some reason she feels that once she releases him the morning will cease to be.

 

Earlier, he’d asked her in his odd lyrical way if he could ease the glide for her when she came to him in the darkest hours of such a transcendent morning. At first it had confused her, but he was slow in putting her on her back, and she only felt that fear-sick rise in her throat once and then he’d done something with his mouth and tongue that banished all the bad memories of a bed at her back.

 

It made the glide easier this time and when the stars came. _By the night,_ it was the best feeling in the world...still rushing within her as fresh as morning dew.

 

“Sweet Dag wants, and Coma provides,” he tells her - a smile in his voice.

 

When she gives him a farewell kiss, he tastes of something salty and vaguely sweet. _Her,_ Dag thinks, licking at his bottom lip and giving it a soft bite when he squirms. Coma follows her up the ladder, and she smirks at the silly sight he makes, halfway out his hole, bare arms glistening with sweat on the floor around the dark pit. He’s all grins, and the Warboys are wearing similar looks, but there’s something oddly innocent about the outside smiles and eyes on them that make her smile too.

 

“Tonight,” she tells him, watching him nod and lick her taste off his lips again.

 

He doesn’t have eyes to see her, but she swears she feels his gaze on her back as she leaves him behind. _Only until tonight_ , she reminds herself, smirking once again. He'll come bearing music and play for her and the stars while she plucks them from the sky.

 

Capable catches her eye outside the Vault - hair wet and darker than blood.

 

“Morning,” Dag greets, still smiling and perhaps flushed as well because her red-haired sister pauses and stares, blushing herself. _There should be no more secrets_.

 

“Good morning - they…” she starts then stops, swiping moisture from her soaked hair off her cheek and temple, teeth running into her lips before looking away, “They have another Warboy waiting for you. I think they’ve been there since the sun came up.”

 

“Who was it?” Dag asks, remembering Coma remarking on one of his drummers, infected and sick still from a boulder crushing one of his legs on the Fury Road, and how they’d cut away black flesh from his thigh a few days before.

 

“Nuet, he got a fever bad in the night…” Capable tells her, frowning and wringing out the water from her hair into a small tin cup. Dag can’t recall the name, but it doesn’t matter, she’ll bury him as though she knew him and loved him. It’s what they deserve, even if she doesn’t genuinely feel that way.

 

“Come,” Dag whispers, taking her sister’s wrist that’s still water-soft, “you can pour that over the sapling I’ll plant inside him.”

 

Her sister’s face turns, nose wrinkling and for a second it looks like she might grow sick with the thought, but then Dag witnesses her nodding, understanding. They are all - Sisters, Warboys and all - ready to help. And though it apparently turns her sister's stomach a glint shows in her eyes that say more than words can. She will do what she can - to help, as everyone else does.

 

“Yes,” Capable mutters, swallowing thick and dreadful, “I’d like that.”

 

It’s clear the idea is off putting to her still, but she follows, keeping care of the cup of water as they ascend the stairs, reaching the cool, bright morning. Dag breathes in the crisp air and the sweet aroma of the green things - the fruits and flowers, of the herbs and grasses. The slick of Coma’s seed makes her inner thighs slippery as she steps bare-footed through the grass, but it’s not disgust that she feels, but delight and some steps make her ache deeply, but that too feels good like little else has.

 

Capable leads her to a fresh open patch of soil.

 

The Green Thumbs that dug the plot are lounging up in the trees, one of them basking on a rock where the sun hits it just right. They are dirtied to the elbows and sweaty, each aimlessly staring at nothing. A lone Warpup is all that lingers near the corpse, and all Dag can see of him is the old scars on his back, crossing like whipping marks...and even from behind there is no doubt he’s too young to have scars as old as this.

 

“Nuet was one of the Warboys we saved from the Arena...they had him in there for months before we found him...starved and so sick. Nothing Maddie did help. He- m-my Piker found him while looking for tools for one of the Revheads. He’s not talking…I,” Capable worries her thumb, watching the pup, “I think he witnessed Nuet...”

 

Dag felt an itch under her skin; worming between her ribs and into her belly, “He’s the one that’s after the milk you don’t have, isn’t he?”

 

Capable finally smiles, even if it’s a sad, small thing and nods, looking back to the sight of her dressed up and ruined Warpup and the corpse he’s hunched silently over.

 

“Let’s begin then…” Dag whispers, pulling on Capable's hand, only feeling the slightest resistance before they start the gory work of letting this Warboy - a man enslaved and brutalized - finally, live again.

 

-

-

-

-

 

The first thing Toast realizes, upon awakening, is that she’s sore and hot and all manner of terrible, uncomfortable things. 

 

It feels like she has boulders crushing her legs and sweat feasting all along the backs of her knees and between her toes - and then she opens her eyes, scratching blindly at her thighs for the blanket or whatever must have her legs in such a tight, relentless grip - but she meets hot, rough skin and screams.

 

Slit separates himself from her much like anyone would having touched a fiery red slab of metal. The stitches on his stub prick her calves and the seal of his skin on her thighs that must have formed in the night, peels and goes cold immediately. 

 

He looks at her like she’s woken him up in the dead of night, on a four-day ride just as he finally got to sleep. _Murderous,_ she thinks and quickly sneers, kicking him in the ribs until he hisses like some lizard and crawls off the bed.

 

“What the bleeding fuck are you doing?!” she screams. She's in a bad mood - it’s not his fault, or it is and she’s overreacting, but his sweat is mixed with hers, and her toes are numb and he’s glaring at her like she’s the one that was laid up over his legs all night for some unfathomable reason.

 

“I _was_ sleeping,” he growls, itching at the side of his stomach where the press of their skin in the night has made him red - the thick, cracked warpaint having smeared off completely.

 

Toast looks down at her legs and sees patterns of white brushed into her skin…

 

“Don’t you have your own place to sleep?” she asks, this time keeping her voice flat, but no less annoyed. She’s unhappy, and she doesn’t need to hide that from him since he doesn’t hide it from her, but she dampens it regardless.

 

“Why would I sleep with those mediocre shit-smegs? Not even real Warboys and I have to sleep with them now? Better here,” he informs her, snarling, showing off those teeth that look like they could shredd her if he wanted - they don’t just instill fear, though, which just annoys her even more. 

 

“This is my room; I claimed it. It’s not yours to just come and go as you please, and I don’t remember saying you could sleep with me either,” she spits right back, kicking off the lone tangle of sheets from her ankle, rising to her feet on her bed. The only way she can be of even height with him, and sure, it might have looked comical to someone passing by, but this was her room dammit, and he snuck in, in the night while she was asleep and helpless, half-naked. _Still, half-naked_  she realizes.

 

 _Let him try and look down at her like some pup now?_ Toast thinks, clenching her teeth and eyeing him - hopefully as diabolically as he does her.

 

He seems less threatened by her and more amused, which only stirs the fire inside all the more. If he keeps it up, she’ll jump him, take him to the floor and bite the staples out of his face. Even now she knows it’s all furious thoughts, but Slit won’t give an inch and the more he pushes, the more she’ll push back. It’s been many days since she’s felt so angry and for such a trivial thing, but no - it’s her space, and he’s made some claim to it without her say.

 

“You gonna try and shredd me over a fangin’ bunk? It’s big enough for two of me, and you’re just half of me, not even big enough for trainin’.”

 

And, that was it. 

 

With only the one arm, he wasn’t as effective at evading her as Toast figured he’d be, which was wonderful since she got him just around his side, barely missing the solid, cold floor and instead latching onto dense, hot muscles. He shrieks - less robust than she would have thought, and if she’d been in a laughing mood she would have indeed laughed but she’s not and when Slit twists, trying to pull her off with one hand, she bites his shoulder - hard.

 

“Krazy fucking Breeder!” he shouts - calls her _that name_ and it only makes her sink her teeth in harder. She doesn’t break the skin; maybe she can’t, but he barks like a wounded animal and throws himself on her bed, rolling her on her back and bracing himself as if he could pry her off. It’s no use with the one arm. At this, he’s less than her and that knowledge is both delightful and disturbing all at once.

 

Her teeth come loose from his skin, but that just leaves her mouth free, her arms won’t budge and when Slit snarls in her face, yanking at the thigh that she throws around his hip...something happens then. He bangs his nose against hers as she bucks and he struggles...and instead of biting him she’s suddenly kissing him. 

 

The wet slide of his mouth and hers, of teeth and hot breath, doesn’t last long.

 

Slit jerks away as soon as he seems to realize what’s happening and she’s left on her back, panting - it’s reminiscent of the first time he threw her on her back, but she’s not filled with fear or disgust like then. The flesh between her thighs pounds and throbs and she’s wet...it’s wrong, but Slit looks down at her with something akin to anger even though he’s licking his lips as if he tastes her there.

 

“I’m sorry,” Toast blurts, unsure what came over her or why she’d assume like before. Once was enough…it was odd how she could feel like she was the one taking advantage of him when he was so much larger - bred for war...

 

Slit arches a brow, questioning and half-amused, then he sneers, leaning back on his knees, “If you wanted to drain me all you had to do was say so,” and he goes at his buckles with the one hand, frowning but brimming, fingers fumbling. Obviously excited and eager and growling when the buckles won’t be undone so easily.

 

“It’s not call- and what are y- stop! I didn’t say that!”

 

“Then what?” he asks, stilling, staring down at her as if she’s soft. 

 

“Sometimes,” she swallows, reaching up to buckle him back even though he looks upset that he won’t be getting what he wants from her, “...it…”

 

Toast had planned on telling him that sometimes kisses were all that was needed or wanted, but he leans over her and lays his hand on the bed beside her shoulder, glaring in a mess smeared warpaint. His muscles are coiled and even though the burns and scars pull and wrinkle what would have been a flawless canvas of masculinity, Toast swallows before she can drool and kisses him again. This time, he doesn’t pull away and even opens his mouth for her when she presses her tongue to his teeth. 

 

He tastes sour, but it doesn’t bother her. Behind the taste is something else enjoyable and warm and...she throws her other leg up over his thigh and groans when he pushes himself up between her legs like before, rocking hard into her.

 

Slit grunts, shifts, and the mood changes just like that. Panic floods in her veins but the excitement doesn’t wane, only gets stronger despite the cold fear when he jerks roughly against her, igniting pleasure…

 

Toast can’t say exactly what she's thinking when she unbuckles her pants, all while he’s thrusting and kissing, going to his elbow when she sinks her teeth in his bottom lip. But...Slit looks down at her as she wiggles the material over her hips, slides away so she can kick them off her legs and spread her thighs for him.

 

“Breed?” he asks, breathy and ragged, his half arm resting on his side.

 

“No, get on the floor,” Toast moans, already sure of how to deal with the urging feeling making her hips shift and her back arch. It’s never felt like this, even that first time she was so eager to touch herself after the chastity belts came off - it never possessed her then like it does now.

 

“Can’t breed you from there,” he argues as if he knows how to, but he slides down to the floor on his knees, immediately pulling her thigh open to expose all she once was. As always he looks furious, but his fingers pet down the short hair there and without thinking she tells him to put his mouth there, demands he taste and lick her - begs him for it with her hands on her cheeks and her hips shifting to him even though he’s already on her, licking long and firm up the hot line of her.

 

He’s so close she can feel his teeth and when he nips, pinching her flesh it’s just as worrying as it is pleasurable. It shouldn’t make sense - fear shouldn’t mix like this, but it does, and he sucks without her telling him to at the spot that bring the most sensation and Toast covers her face as she released a broken moan.

 

"You know you're as slick as grease down here," he tells her between rough sucks and smacks of his lips.

 

“Oh…” she manages, wanting to pull away when he brings her leg over his shoulder, pulling at the back of her knee until she’s half-hanging off her bed, tilted down into his mouth. But that would mean an end to this and fuck if she’s going to be the reason for that.

 

Slit’s tongue licks down and then in, and suddenly she’s full of his tongue that starts flicking inside her - his hot breath grunting against her. Just as suddenly it’s gone, and he’s gone and Toast opens her eyes to find him ripping at his belt buckles, flicking his tongue around the shine coating his lips and taunt scars.

 

He growls, exposing his solid cock, panting, “I know what to do with it now.”

 

She should have pushed him away, but she doesn’t and maybe later she’ll regret it but despite her better judgment she pulls at his cock, sighing as Slit holds her leg to his chest.

 

The moment she touches the tip of him to where his tongue had been, Slit grunts - eyes flashing - squeezes her thigh and buries himself inside her until the breath is forced out of her lungs. It stings, but it’s better than anything has any right to be and when he lays on his elbow, the back of her knee bending against the crook of his arm and thrusts inside her hard enough that her teeth bang together she realizes this is how she wanted it to feel - how it should always feel.

 

It feels like she’s stuck between two jumper cables when he pulls back, gasping, and then slams into her - hips slapping.

 

He’s not careful. He’s not slow. He doesn’t ask her if it’s too much or if it’s good or what it feels like. Slit doesn’t seem to care at all about her, but it doesn’t matter because she doesn’t bother to ask him either. What he’s doing is perfect even if the throng that pulls inside her when he goes too deep worries her. 

 

But - like all good things - it ends when she palms his jaw, tilts her head up from her chest and lays her lips over his, kissing him as the pleasure mounts. It’s then that she feels him shiver, choke against her mouth and let's loose a nearly painful sounding whine. 

 

Toast isn’t sure what's happening until he jerks his hips one last time, pushes his chest down on hers, bending her leg back painfully…

 

The familiar flood of semen inside her signals the end.

 

“Slit,” she whispers, hopefully, low enough he doesn’t hear, but if the way he tenses and shakes, as though crying between her breasts is any indication then she figures he does. 

 

Her flesh aches, unresolved tension making her mood go sour, but this is another step for him and for her, even if she didn’t finish - so she strokes the back of his head, rubbing sweat back into his painted skin and lets him collapse beside her as his cock softens inside.

 

There’s always next time anyway...

 

-

-

-

-

 

Capable watches well into the late afternoon, into the early hours of the night too, until the white and yellow of headlights break out over the horizon.

 

Dag is nestled up behind her - her long pale arms wrapped around her stomach with her chin on her shoulder. Perhaps she too is watching them…

 

The Doof Warrior is on the run as well after all, and Capable knows now what the man means to her sister. 

 

The sharp smell of dirt and death still sticks inside her nose, and the black earth's packed under her nails from the planting. Her stomach still feels tender from the process - all the dark, cold blood and tough rendered skin of Nuet's open belly - but despite it all she feels gratified. Piker is asleep on the grass beside them, holding onto a still awake Beanut that’s picking at the grass under the dying light, but yawning with coming sleep.

 

“I’m sure they did fine,” Dag whispers against her neck.

 

There is no way of her knowing for certain, but Capable smiles at the reassurance. _Of course they are fine,_ she repeats. Nux is as strong as he’s ever been, even better than when he lead the War Rig through the mud and soft, sour earth. _A salvage run, even through hostile territory, meant nothing…_

 

When the party gets close enough for her to count each vehicle despite the darkness, the shoddy sound of the Doof Wagon filters up through the wind and Dag holds her all the tighter, exhaling softly on her shoulder. Her sister is warm and soft, even if her belly has grown and presses firmly on her back - a reminder of the past. Nux will be down there, and she’ll find him later tonight and lay with him in his bunk. She’ll stroke his chest and kiss his cheeks, hold him tight and sleep as soundly as ever. 

 

He’ll be there, and she’ll find him, even if the other Warboys are awake to watch her.

 

Nux came back for her after all, and she wants nothing more than him as he is. All that he is and ever will be. _Always._


	11. The Way of The Road

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to redcandle17, twiggzzler, Z-Til-B, kiss_from_arose and irismoon for their wonderful, amazing, and helpful comments. And thank you for those that left me kudos as well. It means so much to me.

It takes days and nights to muster the courage to leave her bed of warm Warpups. But one night, while her pups snore and kick, all healthy and dry, she peels herself away from them, wrapping the smooth fabric around her tightly against the cold, damp air. 

 

She knows where Nux sleeps, had helped him to his hard bunk when he was deemed well enough to leave the softer bunk in the Organics. It's more difficult finding it now that it’s dark but even late at night there's movement. Seemingly half of the Warboys are still awake, many of them in their bunks, sniffling and staring as she passes. The eyes of them only bother her when they linger too long, which many of them do. 

 

_“Mirage…”_ One of them mutters from a top bunk. 

 

Another one snorts, _“...naw, just shine comin’ for Nux.”_ The delicate hostility in their tones shakes Capable and further down the hall one of them reaches out as if to grab her, but his fingers just skim the ends of her skirts, whispering, _“So soft…”_

 

Capable holds firm. None of them have done anything to frighten her, but they are men, all lined up on either side of her. Dozens and dozens of them watching. She is not ashamed of being afraid.

 

The smell leaking off them reminds her of Nux before she took him to the pool - something so musky and strong she’d had to press her thighs closed just to keep from leaking out. _It's the same now;_ she admits, blushing. Her face goes so hot she thinks she might melt even more than she already is, but she finds Nux eventually. 

 

He's hanging half off his bunk; arm and leg dangling to the floor as soft snores escape his throat. Many of them sleep hard now, and Nux has proven a good sleeper after his wounds healed. _It's a beautiful, wonderful thing._ He barely even rouses when she leans down to pick up his leg, laying his limbs back on the hard stone bunk before stroking the line of his jaw. 

 

In the darkness, she only barely sees him, but she feels the raised, rubbery edge of the scar that cuts down his cheek. The soft, bumpy texture of his lips, cruel looking though they are, make her smile.

 

“Nux…” she whispers, but he doesn’t wake, only stirs - lips parting against her fingers.

 

She takes it as an invitation. Stares burn her back as she kneels on the bunk. The Warboys that can see her watch as she fits herself between Nux and the roof of his bunk, sliding between stone and flesh to settle in the depth of his space, until she can fit into his side and the back wall, nose brushing his shoulder. He’s so warm, but not hot... _not feverish. He feels like a full-life._

 

“Slit?” he murmurs in his sleep, shifting when she dares to rest a hand on his bare stomach. _The one-armed Warboy,_ Capable recalls, feeling something biting like poisonous snakes inside her bowels. Jealousy again. She swallows it down and paints a smile in the darkness.

 

“It’s just me, Capable.”

 

At that, he appears conscious, albeit disoriented. Nux turns his head towards her voice. She thinks maybe his eyes are open and on her, but what little light remains down here is at his back, casting what she wants to see of him in deep shadows. _He can see her well enough, though,_ she thinks. 

 

“Capable? Where’d you come from...Glory, did I die?” he asks. 

 

Nux rolls on his side and throws a long arm around her - one that feels much heavier than it did a month ago. His nose immediately starts sniffing her out, along her jaw, neck and ending up in her hair where he snorts and sighs. Her body rolls pleasantly at his touch. His body is so warm, and the way he caresses her is unlike anything she's felt before. _Is it any wonder she loves him like she does?_

 

“Not unless I’m dead too,” she replies, smiling as his breath tickles the juncture of her shoulder and neck. 

 

“Can’t be, Sikes is whisperin’ about you.”

 

Capable can’t hear the aforementioned Warboy whispering about her - not past his sniffs and the pounding of blood in her ears. It would be very, very wrong to touch him the way she wants to with so many of them awake and watching, but the little bunks they all occupy are small and thin...no one would really see if she kissed him. Maybe.

 

“I missed you...I hope you don’t mind, you were close to falling off your bunk,” she’d have said more, but Nux breathes a laugh and draws her into him.

 

“Happens. I was gonna find ya after the drive, but you were reading word burgers to the pups - didn’t think it was right to skid in without warnin'.”

 

“I’m here now,” she says low, finding his chin with the tips of her fingers, thumb scraping gently at the smooth line of his jaw. He shaved since the last time she saw him; touched him. Capable can’t decide if she likes it more than the light scruff or not.

 

“Yeah, and rilin' up all my mates. Bet they can smell you - smell real shine. Feel so shine too.” He nuzzles her still, enough that when he stops her skin feels like it’s vibrating - hooked up to some car part for too long. 

 

As though from far away she can hear muffled sounds, voices whispering but it somehow echoes like music. Capable leans in and finds the side of his nose with her lips. She feels Nux inhale sharply, shedding a hot exhale against her face just before she plucks at his ruined lips. He tastes sweet, as though he's eaten some juicy fruit before sleep. It feels wonderful just to kiss him like this; unhurried. Capable can take solace in this - that she can kiss him as though there was enough time to take it as slow as she wanted, but she feels a gentle pressure on her breast and sighs as Nux squeezes the flesh. How long has she waited, wanting to feel his touch there?

 

“Nux…” she moans, shifting closer.

 

His touch isn’t knowing, almost as though he expects her to pull him away, but even that still leaves a certain possession in the contact. _He doesn’t know what he’s doing,_ Capable realizes, smiling into another soft kiss, but he doesn't want to stop.

 

“This alright?” he asks when she releases his lips to breath. 

 

“Mhm,” she manages, laying back so his hand can cup and mold her sensitive flesh all the better. The only touches she’s felt there have been her own or those of her pup, which have become a constant struggle to avoid. Nux’s thumb brushes the hard peak of her nipple, and the little jolt rushes straight down her belly. If she let him do this enough, Capable swears she could orgasm from it. In this way, it almost feels as though Nux knows her body better than she does, which is false and silly...but how else could his inexpert touch feel so wonderful?

 

He kisses her neck, heightening the feeling, tickling with his eyelashes as he plays with the hem of her wraps. _Yes,_ Capable sighs, peeling open the wrappings herself, exposing her naked breasts to his less-than-clean hands to touch and pluck. Even before she feels his rough thumb brush the hard tip of her breast it feels like he's touching - just the exposure is like a caress.

 

“So soft,” he marvels, lifting up on his elbow, watching himself touching her hardened nipples in the limited light, “...wish I was a pup again…”

 

Capable parts her lips to question him, but his nose pushes into the side of her breast, and she can't help guiding his lips to her nipple, where he wheezes happily before sucking it into his mouth. The effect is immediate bliss that travels like static down her belly, right between her thighs. His lips suckle with purpose and Capable sighs, giddy thinking that he might have expected mother's milk yet she has none to give.

 

_“You see it?”_

 

_“...fuckin’ Nux gettin’ mother’s milk is what...dyin’ for a taste.”_

 

The Warboys are watching, somehow, listening more like and Capable blushes hard, pulling Nux’s lips away. He releases her nipple with a wet plop, her breast bouncing. He whines, confused, when she lays her wraps over her chest, scratching the ends nervously as he mouths the covered side of one breast as though unwilling to part with her despite the cloth. Nux doesn't mention it, but she thinks he's wanting more of her, which is better than when she'd reached down between his legs in the pool and found him soft and innocent.

 

“Can I sleep here with you tonight?” she whispers, as low as she can while Nux nuzzles and pets down her stomach. His hot breath presses through her thin wrappings, instigating more buzzing pleasure.

 

“My bunk is your bunk.”

 

It’s sweet of him, so sweet that she grins despite herself. Maybe he’d enjoy sleeping in her pile one night - softer and warmer than here.

 

The juncture of her thighs throbs, insisting on being satiated, but Nux wraps his arms around her, pulls her in close and he’s just as warm as any pup pile and the neglected ache is something she'd learn to suffer with for many days now and it's easier somehow tonight to ignore, especially when she rolls into him and flattens her palm around his back. Close and warm and safe and comfortable, even with the rock underneath her.

 

Maybe she dreams it, but she swears there is something hard pressing against her belly before sleep takes her...like a forgotten wrench in his pocket, _but that couldn’t be...No,_ sleep takes hold, and despite it being a fanciful thought, she pretends it’s something other than some tool and that helps feed the dreams all the more.

 

-

-

-

-

 

Slit is sure as she is shine that he won’t be able to move like this. 

 

Toasty buckles the last belt support just above his ribs and it pokes at the newly healed bust inside his cage somewhere; producing deep stabs of pain, but he keeps quiet as she tugs at the leather. He bites the ball of scars in his mouth as she adjusts the straps some more and nearly opens the hard tissue up when she helps him fit his bandaged stub in the soft socket. 

 

It aches in the bones, and something even deeper than that like thick boiling guzz in the marrow. The healing stub needs straps too and by the end of it Slit has to focus so heavily on the water stains on the floor just to stop from shoving her away. So focused on just that one goal that he doesn’t hear her...

 

Her nails scratch at his ribs, making him jerk, almost chuckling, “What,” he demands, unwilling to look over at her as she slides her fingers away from the awkward mechanical thing she’s attached to him.

 

“I asked if it felt loose - listen, alright? The straps are an important part. You wanna lance? I need to get this right.”

 

He growls when she jabs her fingers into his side, nearly igniting that urge to laugh again, but she’s much less jumpy when he does the things that normally makes everyone else leak piss. Her thin, dark brows bunch in annoyance but Slit’s own probably are too when he manages to look down at her. Still looks real shine, maybe more so when she's angry like this. 

 

“Well?” she demands again, crossing her arms, which makes her soft chest push up, attracting his eyes down further. He should have pulled her useless shirt away when he had the chance and gotten himself some mother’s milk when she was in a good mood. Now she’s sour and waiting for him to say something about the clumsy arm she created. 

 

“How do you expect me to fuckin’ lance with this rusty shit suffocating me?” 

 

Once again she doesn’t spit at him like he would have expected, just rolls her eyes like he’s some pup that said something mediocre and goes back to the buckles around his shoulder and chest. It takes her another long moment before it doesn’t feel so awful stuck on him as it is.

 

“It’s just a prototype you know. It’s too heavy and stiff, and nothing’s really all that flush, but if I can get the belts measured right then I can focus on the rest,” she explains it to him, still in that tone that makes his blood boil. 

 

“You get me?” she adds, eyeing him as her nails scratch his waist briefly before they fall to her side. The touch is enough to make his anger shift and his soft bits stiffen. 

 

“How’s it feel now?” she asks, softer this time. Those big eyes run down his chest, and he tenses under the look, curling his fist to bulge up the deep muscles in his upper body. Her eyes widen a fraction and Slit grins.

 

He’s been thinking all morning, day and night about how to get her to breed with him again. He tried invading what she called her _personal space_ , insulting her small frame and even refusing to get out of her bed when she finally let him back in the room after banging at the door until she relented. None of it worked very well, and this was as close as she let him get so far - her little fingers adjusting the fangin’ belts like she was some Gyverboy and her eyes assessing the strength in him. He was still chrome as fuck compared to any of the other mediocre smegs living soft now, but he wanted her to notice that more than he cared for anyone else too.

 

“Feels better,” he admits when she won’t stop looking at him.

 

Slit wants to breed her bad. Those big dark eyes and puffy lips...the way they felt on his mouth. He woke up trying to get his tongue between her legs again, but her knee banged into his head and when he tried again she just kicked at him and rolled back over into sleep, throwing a few curses his way when he dared to tug at her ankle.

 

If all she wanted were for him to eat at her soft bits, he’d do that. Maybe if he did it enough, she’d let him inside her tight slickness again. 

 

Slit groused as she eyed the metal arm and not his flesh blood one that he was flexing. Wanting her so bad was also annoying…he felt like an overly eager pup waiting for a Warboy to pluck him up for trainin’.

 

“How does it feel?”

 

“Hard,” he tells her, grabbing at his stiff bit pressing into the canvas of his pants, but she frowns and shakes her head. Toasty didn’t seem too worried about the state of his bits, which only made his lip curl and the pulsing flesh surge.

 

“You’re stub, idiot. Is it still hurting?”

 

Slit lifts it, finding it hard to assess the pain with his hard bit throbbing, 

 

“Sometimes the arm feels like I got it laid out on a hot rock - like the skin’s melting off, even though it’s gone and ain't coming back.”

 

She looks appalled by that, but it’s true and most times he forgets it’s gone and only remembers when he goes to grab something but meets nothing and sees nothing. Other times the pain of it wakes him up in a panic, grasping at it like he’s still trying to rip it from the Razor Cola.

 

“I think...think that’s normal. Like a ghost limb or something,” she says, rubbing at her cheek. _She’d know_ , he figures. If she’s not ignoring him or gyverin’ on his metal arm, then she’s mouthing the symbols in the word burgers. 

 

Toasty told him while he watched her repeating the symbols aloud, that he was supposed to eat that green-shit because of _vya’mins_ or some smeg-like reason. She offered him a _kiss_ each time he ate one of them, though, so he figured he really got the better end of the deal, so he ate them all without too many insults.

 

Slit snorts, forgetting about the old pains and the soft little _kisses_ when she starts unbuckling the rusty arm, shifting in his eagerness to escape the confines of it.

 

Once it’s off he feels less cornered but no less itchy. His bits are hard still, and he isn’t so sure it’s worth begging Toasty to help him make them soft, especially when she settles down in her workspace, picking up tiny little screws many times smaller than any he’s seen Nux work with. 

 

With her back to him he can see the only scar he’s found on her yet - the old brand, same as he’s got on the back of his own neck.

 

_Doesn’t look right on her,_ he thinks.

 

The tingles in his half-arm come back, and he curls the absent fingers, pretending they’re there until he eventually looks down to see nothing but the floor. _Might as well give up any hope of lancing now._ The harness was uncomfortable and if the idea of working with a metal arm wasn't hard enough he’d have straps on his chest, limiting his movement. _He'll have to train all over again, and rust to that - he won’t do it in front of those smegs..._

 

Slit thinks about storming out of their room when she doesn’t turn around even though he kicks the metal frame of the bunk, but his bits throb, and he wants to be inside her scorching, wet insides again. It’s inside her that he felt time stopping, just as good as when he got thrown on the back of his own ride - popped his first Buzzard...got his first taste of hot, speeding air.

 

Toasty doesn’t move when he stands behind her, as though still ignoring him. That won’t do, though, so he traces the raised brand mark. _It’s not right on her - looks wrong,_ but it gets her attention, and as soon as she turns around he pulls at her arm, getting her up on her feet. 

 

“What is it now?” she demands, yanking her arm free and looking furious but Slit knows if she was so angry she’d just punch or kick him. 

 

“Want to get inside you again,” he tells her, figuring all his little attempts weren’t any good, so words were probably better.

 

Toasty laughs, bitter and he sneers without thinking. _What was so fangin’ funny about that?_

 

She didn’t seem to hate it, especially when he had his mouth on her. She tasted salty too, just how he liked. Maybe she just needs warming up, like an engine left alone too long.

 

“Want me to get on my knees first?” he asks, raising a brow, “I’ll do it - you liked that better. Just let me get a taste and then you’ll want me in there again.” 

 

He leans down to put his mouth on hers, just like she did to him, but her tiny fingers push at his lips, stalling him. Slit thinks it’d be easy, even with the one arm, to just toss her on the bed and do what he wants until he feels that glorious death again, but the idea doesn’t stir him like remembering her eager little noises does.

 

Slit bites the inside of his cheek where the bundle of slippery scar tissue is the toughest, thinking she’ll throw him out again, but her puffy lips part and a soft, “...get on your knees then,” makes him groan.

 

_Finally,_ he grins while sinking down to his knees. He wants to tell her he won again - that she made a deal with him that gives him the better slice, but the idea of her kicking him away keeps him quiet. 

 

“Try not to use your teeth this time,” she whispers, sounding like he drug her through half the territory on her bare feet as she spreads her thighs before he can do it himself. The thin wraps around her hips replaced her pants today, and he wasn’t sure which he liked better until he catches sight of the moist, wrinkled flesh...all shiny and soft and smelling good enough he has to swallow a few times before opening his mouth on it.

 

_Salt. Soft. Delicate._ Her fleshy folds glide on his tongue, and he growls in triumph when she throws a leg over his shoulder. Toasty tastes better than the stuff she feeds him - _maybe,_ he thinks, this is all he needs to get stronger. _Fuck the real food._ He just wants her for every meal. 

 

“That’s good...yes,” she moans and the slick noises his mouth makes on her causes his hard bits to pulse - a stab of that good stuff going straight up his stomach. Slit can’t wait; he licks up inside her, thrusting as far back as he can, stretching the taut seal sucking back on him while unbuckling his belts. Her taste is richer inside, and he curls his tongue over and over again to get it out and swallow it down. 

 

When he strokes his aching hard bit, it feels almost as good as when he had it jammed up inside her.

 

Her soft hand on his face makes him stop, looking up. 

 

_Holy V8,_ she’s glowing, panting and lookin’ like she’s drunk on guzz fumes. Her soft thumb swipes his lower lip, and he nips at it with his teeth even though she said no teeth - it only makes her moan, though, so he figures she just doesn’t want his teeth on the softest parts of her. 

 

“Can you lick here…” the fingers on his mouth slip away, and he follows them between her thighs, just over a stiff little nut at the top. Slit leans in and laps at it immediately, looking up at her as he does it to catch the way her teeth sink into her lower lip and her eyes roll back. 

 

“Oh…” _that noise again_ \- the one she made before and when he sucks on the hard bead of skin her legs shake on his shoulders, pulling him in closer until he has to brace his hand on the desk by her hip, leaving his hard bit to twitch, ignored. Her thighs clench on his head, sealing his ears, muffling her soft little sounds that make his hard bit jerk all the more.

 

Slit wants to drain inside her again - too many times he’s stroked himself off on the floor or on his stomach. _Too many times to count now._ Toasty felt so fangin’ shine. More shine than anything else and so he chokes back the ache in his stomach and works his mouth over the stiff bulb that makes her start sweating and shaking.

 

“Keep doing that...faster, yes,” she tells him - her orders dim and distant from her thighs, but Slit laps at her, circles the nut and sucks on it hard when her fingers lace around the back of his head, pulling him deeper until the wet cola she’s leakin’ coats his chin and scars. The hair on her soft mound tickles his nose as he feasts on her until her sounds go feral.

 

Her noises turn into yips, quick small sounds, and then he doesn’t hear her at all, just feels her nails in his scalp and her thighs shakin’ somethin’ fierce around his head.

 

Toasty shoves him away when he sucks harder, crying out like he hurt her. But she doesn’t look hurt when he catches sight of her. Looks like she got done fighting four rounds in the pits; shining with sweat and panting. _It’s a good time to breed her,_ Slit thinks, racing up to his feet and pulling at her wrist, shoving her hand around his hard bit to help guide him inside her like before. He lays his hand on the desk, steals her lips before she can shove him away and thrusts as hard as he can.

 

This time, the sound she makes is definitely painful, and he freezes, heart-stopping as if he was thrown under the wheels. 

 

Slit dares to look down at her, but her heads tilted down, and all he can see is her short dark hair.

 

“...warn me next time,” she whimpers like he's shredded her. His chest constricts - the shine in his hard bit forgotten when she looks up at him with a bunched up, pained look. _He hurt her…he didn’t even mean to - didn’t want to. Not anymore…_

 

Toasty swallows loud enough he can hear it echo in his ears and mutters, “...don’t freak out. I just wasn’t ready for you is all. Give me a couple moments, alright?” Slit nods, watching her as she strokes the old scars on his cheeks. It’s only when she touches them like this that he wishes he had any feeling left there, and not just the gentle pressure. 

 

Toasty pulls him down, and he’s as slow as he can be when she kisses him. _No spookin’ her - no hurtin’ either,_ he warns himself. But when her hips shift, hidden strength clenching down on his hard bit, he forgets to be slow. 

 

Nails scrape at his neck as he rocks deeply, trying to balance on his feet so he can hold the back of her, bring her in close. But she clings, wraps her thighs around his hips and keeps him steady, so he takes advantage of that and curls up inside her until he hears the desk banging against the wall.

 

“...fuck! Slit, fuck me harder, now,” she demands, her teeth on his neck. 

 

“Breedin’ and fuckin’s the same?” he asks, feeling the death starting to pull at his innards like hooks in meat. 

 

“Yes! Now,” her hips bang into his and he figures she wouldn’t want it so rough if it didn’t feel good, so he digs his fingers into her spine and picks her up, drops them on her bed, plants his knee, driving within her tiny insides until his head starts to swim and the shining death rips at his guts. Her body shakes with him, and something pulses around his hard bit and then it feels like her hand, but better - squeezing and tugging on him while her high yelps pierce his ears. 

 

He dies then and keeps dyin’ until she somehow gets him on his back, rocking in his lap and that too kills him until he hates the shine she’s giving him as much as he loves it. Slit suffers through the feeling, so intense it’s like a pain but not. Doesn’t last long, though - she falls on him like a corpse and gulps down breathes while his hard bit goes soft inside her.

 

This time, the tears don’t come from him, but from her. She’s never done it before now...but he figures what she did for him when it happened would help, so he strokes her head and back and pushes his nose down on her scalp, but it doesn’t seem to work…

 

More tears that wet his chest - more of those noises that he doesn’t like… and then she goes quiet and lifts up, her palms on his stomach, “Don’t call it breeding anymore, alright? Call it fucking or rutting or whatever else you want to…just not that.”

 

Slit nods, unsure what else to do for her. Toasty wipes away the tears and Slit thinks maybe he should have done that for her, but if there’s a next time, he’ll remember to do it then.

 

Thankfully, once the wets gone from her eyes she smiles, and Slit feels the tension in his body drain finally. Her words help too, “I climaxed twice you know, once with your mouth and then again with your cock. It's...it's funny you know, I didn’t think I could do it like that. First time for everything, though...you know that better than I do...” 

 

Slit arches a brow, thinking the climax-thing was like when he dies - when she drains him. Toasty called it something else before, but he can’t remember. _Dying sounds better for it,_ he thinks. _Better than gettin' drained at any rate._ She was right about that.

 

“Do you think you could do that thing with your mouth every day?”

 

Slit nods, grabbing her thigh on pure reflex when her hips shift, igniting a thick shock of shine. He realizes too late that he forgot to pull away the cloth covering her soft chest - and when he reaches for the hem of her covering she rolls away, flushed, smooths down the wraps at her hips and smiles, “Good...now let’s find something for your new wrist.”

 

-

-

-

-

 

“Here, taste this one,” she urges, sliding something wet and sticky on his lower lips, rubbing it in until he opens his mouth and swallows the soft, sweet fruit immediately.

 

“You didn’t even taste it did you?” The Dag seems in good spirits, despite the sandstorm that ravaged the new saplings in the night - high winds bringing with them hard dust that managed to gain speed between the rocky peaks, destroying many of the newly planted growths from the clippings. The tiny roots they sprouted got yanked from the soft soil and carried away, many of them they salvaged - her and her Greenthumbs, but half remained missing. The scouts would probably find some buried in the sands on their patrols throughout the days.

 

“Here, open up,” she urges again. Coma grins and takes another piece of the slippery, sweet stuff and lets this slice linger. He chews it slow and swallows, licking at the leftover juice. Mending but stiff fingers pluck at his strings, and he’s sure as the sun on the top of his head that she’s biting her lip as he cleans his mouth off.

 

He plays for her something soothing, knowing she needed it after the loss last night, and offers, “ _She_ toiled the soil for thousands of days. All for one grove. Up in flames once, then twice and planted a third time. Losses beget wins and you Sweet Dag will plant many times over.”

 

She’s quiet after that, but he knows her thoughts, drifting as she worries the earth with her fingers before adding, “This _She_. Was she your wife?” The question is delicate and gentle, like songs and melodies, but it’s all a cloak to hide something that’s tiny and scared. Coma grins, unable to banish the joy that this miraculous creature such as The Dag would harbor such possession for him, even against a possible dead wife. As though he was full-life enough for one of those.

 

“No wife. Mother…” but _She’s_ gone still, just as sure as any other dead love. Maybe one of the scouts will find _Her_ buried in the sands like they’ll find Dag’s clippings...but it’s best not to hope too much. _She’ll_ live on in his memories and what he can lend of _Her_ knowing to The Dag. _She_ will live on through her.

 

“ _She_ sounds like a goddess,” Dag whispers - he feels her hand rest on his knee, fingers stroking the worn material patched on his leg. _A goddess,_ Coma tries to recall where that term came from, or what it meant, but then he feels her shifting around his back - feels her arms slide around his shoulders and her hot breath on his neck. Dag is a goddess...of the earth, of the soul...he’ll worship at her shrine. So maybe she’s right. _She_ was a goddess… _bu_ _t so is she._

 

_"Coma, I hope - I hope I birth a Goddess and not a Warlord..."_

 

 


	12. Just Driving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nux pulls himself out of death for another kiss from Capable. Coma's halved Axe is all he has left and Slit...could have faired better. Some of the luckier War Boys were spared death but the rest The Dag will plant with the seeds for the new world and among it all Toast is just trying to find a purpose amongst the shift in the air. The rest, well there's no telling really.
> 
> I couldn't bear to accept that some of my favorite characters didn't make it. It's a fanciful tale that might make sense in some aspects and scream nonsense in others. We'll see I suppose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long break between this chapter and the last. I have no excuse. Thank you so much to redcandle17, twiggzzler, Liisiko, kiss_from_arose, RubyQuinn, Daydreamisallihave, stracer, Z-Til-B and NickieSays for their wonderful, amazing, and helpful comments. And thank you for those that left me kudos as well. It means so much to me.
> 
> I promise I'll get around to responding to all your brilliant comments soon.

“...what are you-...” she jerks, “fucking hell!”

He pauses, lips close but motionless 

“...no, I didn’t say stop,” Toast sighs, deciding to let him do what he wants since it all seems to feel good, even when he doesn’t realize it.

True to his silent agreement he’s been ready for her when she wakes up, always sitting up and watching her by the time her eyes open. 

This morning he said nothing, just gave her an insufferable smirk and flopped on his stomach, nudged her thigh open with his half-arm and slid his tongue down between her legs. 

It’s been several mornings of this already, and Toast can’t imagine starting her day without it now. All the stress from the night. Old memories masquerading as nightmares, tense muscles, residual sleep, all seems to melt under his mouth, and it doesn’t hurt that it leaves her feeling giddy and smiling for hours after.

He shifts closer, poking the underside of her knee with the bristled end of his stub and hisses against her cunt before biting at the less tender skin of her inner thigh. 

Toast recalls yesterday morning when he seemed confused that she brought him food for the morning meal.

“Already ate,” he’d told her, grinning and it made her want to drop through the floor in an odd mixture of arousal and shame. 

Slit sucks on that nub again and Toast arches, folding her arms over her head and exhaling as the tight little ball in her belly peaks. The orgasm feels more intense when she breathes out once it finally releases, and it makes her moan louder - something she found out Slit likes immensely and if he likes that then who was she to deny him, especially when it was something she did without thinking.

Once again he tries to mouth her past her orgasm, but it hurts...it’s too intense, so she lifts away groaning.

“Wasn’t done yet,” he grumbles, licking his lips and sucking on his teeth, glaring at her. 

“Well,” Toast manages, laying her skirts back around her hips with a shaky hand, covering her well-pleasured flesh, still slippery with his spit and throbbing, “I am.”

“That was quick, Toasty - too fangin’ fast. Let me get back in there...I'm still hungry…”

“I'm not food...keep saying that and I won’t want you to do it anymore,” she warns, watching him arch a brow, sneer and roll up into a sitting position. He’s still frowning as he begins wiping the leftover shine off his cheeks, licking his fingers clean. Toast flushes so hard at the sight she thinks her skin might start cooking. Water. She just needs some water. Fresh water…

Later, while they eat, her with a bowl of strawberries and him with a mug of soaked soybeans with a whole spoonful of salt, she lets herself imagine what he would look like without all the paint, metal, burns, and scars...it’s harder somehow to picture him with two arms, though. He hunches on the edge of her bed, shoving spoonfuls in his mouth, mashing them in his cheeks before swallowing greedily. He brings the same enthusiasm to eating food as he does eating her it seems. Slit admitted he thought he could sustain himself on her like she was some form of mother’s milk…

The thought was appalling, but watching him now and recalling how he cleaned his fingers of her makes her feel something that’d be hard to describe as disgust. 

“I guess we need to go scavenging down in the mess they brought back last night,” she mentions, swallowing the last bite of strawberry, watching him licking the edge of his mug with the same tongue he had shoved up inside her this morning. Toast fumes, setting her empty bowl aside and crossing her arms. She refuses to look at him while he tries to reach deep inside the mug with his tongue, getting every last bit he can before grunting in pleasure.

“No point,” he tells her, smacking his lips, “all the best chrome will be gone already.”

“I don’t need the shiniest or the best. I need particular things.” 

She grabs her list from her desk and plunks down beside him on the bed, ignoring the pleased noise he makes at the contact and shows him her little sketches of the things she needs for his arm. 

Slit laughs at her, mean and bitter before jabbing her with his elbow, “Gonna have to shredd a few smegs for these things - ain't nobody going just to give them to you.”

“I have things to trade if it comes to that,” she says frankly. He withdraws at that and against her better judgment she looks up at him, finding him looking torn and greedy.

“Thought I was the only one that got that.”

Toast blinks abruptly, flushing with anger and sits up, “Do you really think I'd trade myself for fucking tools?”

Slit looks ruined, halfway between shame and a similar birthing of anger she herself is suffering against, then he shrugs and fingers the old stitches on his stub, “...wanna go down and search through scrap or not?”

She wants to argue with him, but the orgasm he gave her has pacified her to a degree and she knows it. Besides, this is just another Warboy thing she doesn't understand and if he wanted to insult her it would have been much more explicit than this. 

Misunderstanding, Toast realizes, turning back to the wrinkled papers in her hands. He doesn't know any better. It's not his fault. In time, he’ll figure things out, but until then she takes a deep, calming breath and looks over at his grim, lowered expression. 

“Look, Slit…” she whispers, waiting until he looks over up her before continuing, “...what I do with you, the fucking, it's just between us alright. It's not a commodity. It's...special. And you don't trade special things. Do you?”

Slit doesn't reply; he doesn't do much for what feels like the longest time until he suddenly sits up, making her jerk in surprise. He makes his way to her slowly, head hanging down, looking like death and malice and promises that make her stomach knot up. But he doesn’t rend her insides or sink his teeth into her neck, just leans on and kisses her cheek like he’s some impressionable Pup. So much like the touchy-feely ones that hang around Capable, Toast realizes, unable to help the smile that curls her lips. She’s getting soft again, she realizes.

“I won’t trade you if you don’t trade me,” he tells her, sincere and dangerous and not like the Slit she’s come to tolerate. It wasn’t really what she meant either, but Toast manages a smile when he keeps staring into her eyes - the look makes her itch something odd.

Down in the Holes are the large scrap piles. Slit wastes no time in biting her list between his teeth and digging in. Now and then she catches him resting on his arm, panting, the list laid out on his leg as he eyes the parts they need. He's awkward with the one arm, especially now that she’s seeing him outside the confines of her room or the Organics that she had tended to him so often in. He’s a real Warboy out here, or maybe not even a real one still yet since he’s not hanging off the back of a speeding vehicle...but he’s digging through junk and having to right himself when he goes to support himself on an arm that isn’t there.

A part of it is painful to watch, but she feels proud of him in a way she never felt pride in anyone else but her sisters before. 

A few groups off down the way pause to look as well, but they look at her and him and seem confused. If Slit hadn’t told anyone what she was building, then no one would know. She’s made a habit of keeping to herself, even from her sisters. It was always like that really, even in the Vault; locked away and with nowhere to hide.

“Found one!” Slit yells, sticking a six-inch length of quarter-inch steel between his teeth, stuffing her list in his pocket and shoving himself up on his feet. He’s wobbly still - as though he can’t quite balance properly without his other arm and it pains Toast despite how furiously pleased he looks to have found a part. His lips are stretched thin, staples pulling at tender looking flesh and the thin blacked skin under his eyes is wrinkled. Couldn’t look more please, Toast thinks with a wry sort of smile.

Something about the way he hands it to her makes her feel as though he’s more excited to find it for her...and less that it’s for his arm. What that makes Toast feel is something...unexpected...

-  
-  
-  
-

Nux feels the sweat dribbling down his spine - the socket wrench cutting into his hands that are still growing back the calluses he’d lost while bunk-ridden and useless. One of the blisters popped when he’d been helping Capable that morning with the knots on her hips, and her fretting made his cheeks hot, different than they were now as the heat from the welding unit blazed near him. Any more and he figures his skin will melt and sleuth off his bones.

“Smeg-shit...get closer, dare you…” a raspy, violent voice grouses just above Nux.

Slit was braced on the hood of the caddy, biting his nails as he stares off at the smallest Sister - the one with darker skin than the rest and short hair. Slit’s been looking at her more than anything else today, even fangin’ up the wires under the hood more than once because of her. They were supposed to be working together, and they were supposed to be taking a break, but Nux wasn’t keen on the breaks, and he could glug down the aqua cola while he worked. Slit used his break to watch his favorite Sister going over tools and junk with two Warboy across the line, growling when they did something he didn’t approve.

His ex-lancer still ignored him, only throwing him a sneer once in a way of greeting when they met at the rig that morning. Nux was just happy Slit didn’t jump him like last time. The raised egg on the side of his head had only just started fading, and the headache that followed Slit’s bashing had been uber-rust to deal with for two days after.

“...watch him!” Slit hisses, jerking against the windshield, crawling up on his knees with his one hand bracing on the hood latch, eyes hot and dark and deadly. Slit got that look when he spotted Buzzards in the distant, through the dust, but when Nux turns to see what the fuss is about all he can see is Toast the Knowing taking a couple of small caps from a Garageboy, smiling.

Nux swallows, looking from Slit to the Garageboy with a furrowed brow. Nothing good was gonna come from him lookin’ like that, especially not when he starts grinning, feral-like and mean. Nux couldn’t imagine Slit shreddin’ anyone with one arm, not really and the one Warboy in the small group around the Sister was called Durk, bigger in the chest than even Slit and that one had two big arms to match.

“Let it go, will ya?” Nux tells him, finishing the last bolt on the chassis with a final droplet of sweat. All the aqua cola was making him sweat more too. It seemed such a waste that Nux wrinkles his nose before licking it off his arms while Slit remains perched on the cab, shoulders back, single arm ram-rod straight. Looks like he’s about to lunge, Nux thinks, turning his eyes to the side with a groan. The salty taste of his sweat sticks in his mouth like ash, as a spark from the arc welder at the back of the rig burns his shoulder. The sting wakes him up enough that when Slit starts scrambling off the hood, pure intent clear, Nux manages to loop his fingers in one of his belts. It's slippery with sweat, but Nux throws his other hand up, nails curling in Slit’s stomach and bites down on the back of his neck.

“Fuckin’ traitor filth - get your fangs off me!” Slit barks, howls, and kicks but Nux throws them in the dirt, and it’s not all that hard to pin Slit down when he’s only got the one arm to punch at him with - but Slit slides out of Nux’s hold and gets him good in his jaw, clattering his teeth together hard enough that Nux laughs when the pain blooms up in his skull, bouncing around before settling in his throat. 

Suddenly Slit grins, tossing Nux back in the dirt, dust sticking to the tacky skin down his spine and gets him in the ribs, just hard enough to hurt. Nux throws up his knee in retaliation, matching Slit’s grin as best his lips can allow before they roll again and Nux gets Slit pinned back, laughing, sweaty and dirty and then Capable is there with a bag of tools and a Warpup at her side, wide-eyed and red-cheeked.

Nux blinks, scrambling up to his knees and tries for his feet, but Slit swipes his ankle and Nux goes back to the ground, hip jarring in the dirt and feeling rusty while his ex-lancer just laughs while Capable frowns.

“Capable,” Nux breaths, swallowing dirt and spit.

Slit’s still laughing, mean and just like the old days, but he’s got a fresh blotchy bruise on his chest and stomach that Nux can look at if he gets cocky later. He ‘aint as shiny and chrome as he used to be and Nux’s got proof of it.

It doesn’t take long until Capable’s frown turns up, smiling - doesn’t reach her eyes though and Nux searches the rest of her face while she pats the Warpups shoulder, who jogs off without a word. 

“Toast said she found these, but they weren’t what she needed, so she said I should bring them to you,” her face goes red again, as her hair - so shine he wants to pull her close and kiss her like she let him last night, but her arms reach out to hand him the straw bag, spewing with tools.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt anything…” she whispers when he gets to his feet, taking the heavy bag from her with a smile. 

Slit is gone when Nux turns to look for him, but it’s easy to spot him, shoving away a Garageboy from Toast the Knowing, his voice loud enough and insulting enough to be heard from across the garage. He doesn’t know why none of them shredd him for it, but not even Durk stands his ground when Slit squares his shoulders, pushing him forehead to forehead, teeth barred. They all just back away, shifting eyes and just like that Slit wins without spillin’ any blood.

“Nux?”

Nux turns back to Capable, the tools hefted under his arm and smiles at her, even if she looks worried. 

Usually, she smiles when he does but this time the strange look remains and her cheeks keep their color, even when he nudges her boots with his own, grinning.

“You unwell?” it occurs to him suddenly and just like that he sets the tools down on the hood of the cab, takes a wide step to close the distance between them and is met with her hands on his chest, warm and soft and chrome. 

“N-no I’m fine, I just...you shouldn’t be wrestling like that. You’re still healing you know,” she tells him, but it doesn’t sound like she means it - not really. Nux nods either way, though. She knows better than him. He was never good at taking care of himself. Better for him now that Capable can show him how to keep his engine running clean.

She smiles. Finally! - eyes crinkling and Nux dares to run his fingers down her back, soft, barely there, in case she doesn’t want him touching her here in front of the others.

In the night, she seemed less eager to let him suck on her chest when his mates could see. When her hands slide away from his chest, running over his ribs and then around his back to hold him close, he thinks he might fall back even though Slit isn’t undercutting him. Capable smells like the air on high mixed with the taste of the fruit she feeds him sometimes and Nux mouths the top of her head, thinking he can soak up her smell on his tongue.

Capable just rubs her nose on his V8, breathing short quiet laughs when he licks the top of her head and Nux grins wide, allowing himself to wrap his long arms around her as she does him. 

“How’s the rig coming along?” she asks, muffled and hot on his chest and Nux stirs below his belts, feeling itchy almost. The thing starts happening again as she breaths out and in against him, her thumbs rubbing deep into the planes of muscle down the sides of his spine. Everything she does to him always feels so shine, and for some reason the thing that happened in his car - the same thing that happened again last night - happens now and he feels his soft bits rise against her.

“Nux-” she’s gone from his arms so quickly he gasps, looking no doubt torn because when she looks up at him, it’s like the looks she gave him when he was still barely able to drain himself.

Nux…” she whispers, closing the distance again but this time, she wraps her hands around his wrist and tugs him with her, rough and un-Capable-like. Nux follows, though, always would and always will until he goes out soft - a thing she says is just as historic as going out in flames. 

Is he in trouble? It’s bad he’s like this, he thinks, feeling his engine running hard. Each step behind her feels so chrome he almost groans - his hard bit pushing tightly in his pants, rubbing against the bare canvas.

“Furiosa,” Capable startles, stopping dead so Nux can bump into her, his hard bit crushing between his legs and her hip. She makes a thin whine, fingers clenching around his wrist.

Imperator Furiosa is standing before them, chrome arm holding a sack strap slung over her shoulder. Nux shifts, pulls his hard bit away from the soft, warmth of Capable, feeling unwelcome despite how Capable tugs him back to her. The Imperator is eyeing him, frowning, searching and unreadable. An itch starts somewhere along Nux’s chest, and he hunches forward, making himself small enough that if the Imperator decides to shredd him, he can duck out of the way faster than standing high.

“How’s our Driver doing?” Imperator Furiosa asks, but her eyes don’t do much but stab over Nux once before resting on Capable, thin, black brow arching in question. It’s not harsh like if she’d asked him a question, but Nux doesn’t miss the bite behind it. 

Capable shifts, looks back at him, staring at the spots of muddled color on his skin where Slit bashed him good. Nux grins but Capable doesn’t glance at his face, just flushes deeper and turns back, thumbing the pulse at his wrist soothingly, “Better every day. I was just going to show him what they brought back fro- ”

“Don’t lie to me,” Imperator tells her, hard but careful, “...just...don’t do anything stupid,” she adds, softer this time. 

Nux bristles despite it, rolling back his shoulders. His hips bump back on Capable and though it sparks a pull of shine in his stomach he glares back at the Imperator until her eyes turn to his, staring hard. 

“I know what I’m doing,” Capable whispers, pulling him closer, dragging his arm against her side, another hand closing over his skin, fingers threading in his own; smaller and softer than he’d have ever imagined. Just like that, he deflates, boots shuffling forward, getting closer until his hard bit shifts, shoving between a divot in her body that makes his lips twitch and pull.

“I need him tomorrow morning,” Imperator Furiosa declares, “We have another run - this time to the Bulletfarm. Don’t do anything to jeopardize that,” and then she’s gone, leaving behind an empty archway into the darkness that Capable pulls him to like a death tunnel, but it’s better than the darkness that engulfed him before, because she’s warm and soft and smells like sweets when her arms turn and enclose over his shoulders, drawing him down into her mouth as greedily as he’s seen the ferals take to cola. 

He feels like he’s fighting with Slit when she tugs at his wrists, laying his hands on her backside - so much fuller and softer than his, and pulls herself up on him by the back of his neck. Her tongue flicks his teeth, reaching deeper when he groans. A center of thick heat between her legs soaks through his canvas, stirring his hard bit until his knees start to shake, and he stumbles forward, hand out until he hits a smooth flat surface and lays her on it, thrusting forward.

Nux grunts, unable to help the next hard jerk of his hips. It feels good - so shine and chrome and the soft sounds that Capable makes only make it feel better. 

“Capable...I’m sorry,” he manages, throwing his face into the crook of her neck, opening his mouth to her skin, shaking. Like the bath, he thinks wildly - like the waves the cola made but inside his stomach, laced with flames and guzzoline. Sparks in his hard bit. A ragged turn of his hips as he grinds between her legs, grunting and sweaty and digging his fingers into her spine so hard his fingers begin to ache. She whimpers, thighs going around his hips, heels in the backs of his legs.

"Don't be sorry," she whispers, mewling softly like some tiny animal.

The heat - the smell, her mouth kissing down the side of his face until her fingers are pulling his lips to her and something blows. His engine overheats, leaking hot guzz down his body, erupting from his hard bit like he’s spitting oil. Nux goes rigid, his muscles tensing and then immediately relaxing as he chokes on the shiny leaking feeling.

It’s too much, Nux whimpers, grasping Capable hard, tightening his arms around her body until he thinks he might be crushing her, trying not to fall to his knees.

“I got you Nux...I’ve got you,” he hears her whispering against his wet, puffy lips, “...just ride it out. I’m here.”

Nux nods, shuddering. He rides it out, thrusting softly between her thighs, concentrating on the wet itch of his pants against his hard bit, savoring the sudden empty feeling in his bones. The pain takes a backseat; he’s just him - just Nux, in the driver’s seat.

Just Driving.


End file.
